This study examines research publication and trends in instructional design, as found in selected professional journals during the period 1980-2008. Citation analysis was used to investigate documents relating to instructional design, as indexed in the Web of Science. Instructional design; instruction design; educational design; learning design; teaching design; ID, etc, were the key phrases used for searching the documents, and a total of 758 analysed documents were judged relevant to the field of instructional design. The results of the study were explored according to the journal of publication; document type; year of publication; author; author affiliation; country of publication; most frequently used words and phrases; subject; language; cited by years and h index rating. Notable findings include the most frequently used key words and phrases (after instructional design, these are cognitive load theory and worked examples); regarding subject area, education, educational research, and educational psychology dominate. With regards to country of origin, 87% of authors came from only 7 countries, with countries in the Far East being poorly represented.