What citation patterns are found for thinking skills?

Critical thinking

Design thinking

Creative thinking

Systems thinking

This set of network maps illustrates the pattern of citations across disciplines for research documents published in 2025.

The disciplines are defined by the Fields of Research (FoR) from the ANZSRC 2020, with a maximum of 24 two-digit category codes (denoting broad research disciplines) and 212 four-digit category codes (denoting finer-grained sub-disciplines). The data was drawn from the Dimensions database of research publications, including all document types published in 2025, where each of the four relevant terms is found in the title, abstract or keywords.

The number of documents returned for each term varies: critical thinking (25,310 documents), design thinking (15,854), creative thinking (6,861) and systems thinking (12,643). The corresponding number of FoR categories with which those documents are associated also varies: critical thinking (189 categories), design thinking (93), creative thinking (53) and systems thinking (110). From computational thinking onwards (in the rank order by prevalence), the total document count falls significantly, making the networks hard to compare (which is why they are excluded here).

For each map, there are controls and displays (surrounding the network). The view panel (right) permits zooming in and out of the network. Details for each node and edge can be inspected (bottom). The control panel (left) permits the data variables that determine the scaling and colouring to be selected, and the display variables to be adjusted. Visualisations can be saved and shared in various ways (top), and each visualisation can be expanded to full screen, as required.

Exploring the data in this way can reveal citation patterns relevant to disciplinarity. For example, note the strong links between "Education" (FoR 39) and "Information and Computing Sciences" (FoR 46) for each of the four terms, except creative thinking. Also note the centrality of "Psychology" (FoR 52) for creative thinking, but not the others.

Some of the most cited works related to each of these four thinking skills are listed below:

Design thinking.
Tim Brown (2008),
Harvard Business Review

Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Richard Buchanan
(1992)
Design Issues

What Is Design Thinking and Why Is It Important?
Rim Razzouk, et al. (2012), Review of Educational Research

ChatGPT for good? Enkelejda Kasneci, et al (2023), Learning and Individual Differences

Critical thinking

Design thinking

Transformative Learning. Jack Mezirow (1997), New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education

The relation between 21st-century skills and digital skills. Ester van Laar, et al. (2017), Computers in Human Behavior

Creative thinking

Systems thinking

Creative Cognition. Ronald A. Finke, Thomas B. Ward, & Steven M. Smith (1992)

In Praise of Convergent Thinking. Arthur Cropley (2006), Creativity Research Journal

A Definition of Systems Thinking. Ross Arnold & Jon Wade (2015), Procedia Computer Science.

Learning in and about complex systems. John Sterman (1994), System Dynamics Review

Social psychology of creativity: A consensual assessment technique. Teresa M. Amabile (1982), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Systems thinking, systems practice. Peter Checkland (1981) [book review by C. West Churchman (1982), European Journal of Operational Research

This collection of documents represents some of the most cited sources referring to each thinking skill.

The data was drawn from the Dimensions database of research publications, including all document types published from 1975 to 2024, where each of the four relevant terms is found in the title, abstract or keywords. Sources were selected from the ten most-cited documents for each term. Pop-ups provide additional information with links to detailed explanations.

We can also investigate how popular works such as these are connected to each other.

This network map represents the pattern of citations between some of the most popular works on four thinking skills.

The data was drawn from the Dimensions database of research publications, including all document types published from 1922 to 2025, where each of the four relevant terms is found in the title: critical thinking, design thinking, creative thinking or systems thinking. Filtering out documents with fewer than 50 citations reduced the 42,909 documents to 1,531, of which 1,357 are connected. These are all included here.

The clustering is determined by link strength rather than the terms in the document titles. However, documents focusing on each thinking skill are generally grouped as follows: critical thinking (lower left), design thinking (upper left), creative thinking (left) and systems thinking (lower right).