Productivity in “Top‐Ten” Academic Accounting Journals by Researchers at Canadian Universities*

We examine the research productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities for the 11‐year period 1990‐2000. Our analysis is based on the “top‐ten” ranked refereed journals in accounting, auditing, and taxation, as documented by Brown and Huefner (1994). We first provide an overview of the importance of publishing in highly ranked accounting journals for individual academics, departments, and business faculties. We then provide details of the proportion of articles published in each of these journals by academics from Canadian universities; the type of research published in each journal (auditing, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and taxation); and details of editorial board service. Our results indicate that even at the most productive Canadian university (in terms of “top‐ten” publications), faculty members publish (on average) approximately one article every seven years. Six Canadian universities have faculty members with, on average, more than one article in “top‐ten” journals every 10 years. We also provide results of analyses that rank each Canadian university, after controlling for the relative quality of each journal, using impact factors published by the Social Science Citation Index. In addition, statistics are provided with regard to the 15 most productive researchers, in terms of “top‐ten” publications, in the 11‐year period. Finally, in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, we examine the productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities over the past 25 years by combining our results with those reported by Richardson and Williams (1990).     

An analysis of the research productivity of AIS faculty

During the past 25 years, a number of articles have examined the accounting research productivity of individual faculty members and institutions. Many articles have focused on the quantity of publications, with a few incorporating a quality measurement component. Concurrently, other research efforts have examined the quality of the journals that are considered to be potential outlets for a broad, cross-section of accounting academics. These studies, taken as a whole, have provided valuable insights into the research productivity across the domain of accounting academics. The purpose of this paper is to examine research in the subdiscipline of AIS, from both a quantity and quality perspective and evaluate both institutional productivity and individual faculty productivity. Information from all AIS research published from 1982 through 1998 in 45 accounting and information systems journals was collected and analyzed. Using this data, we show which journals are considered the highest quality outlets for AIS publications, which faculty have published the most AIS research, which employing institutions are rated highest in AIS research productivity and which doctoral granting institutions are rated the highest for AIS research productivity. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the AIS research domain and to accounting by providing valuable insights into the quality of AIS research.     

Of stars and galaxies – Co-authorship network and research

We examine the association between network centrality and research using the accounting research community setting. We establish co-authorship network using papers published in the five top accounting journals from 1980 to 2016. We find that the co-authorship network in accounting is a “small world” with some most connected authors playing a key role in connecting others. We use machine learning to label published papers with multiple topics and find patterns in topics over time. More importantly, we find that co-authorship network centrality is positively associated with future research productivity and topic innovation and that the impact of centrality on productivity is higher with more senior authors. Further, centrality of an author’s co-authors also has an incrementally positive impact. We conclude that network centrality positively influences research output.     

Research productivity of Australian accounting academics

In recent decades, substantial changes have impacted the global academy, such as the increasing use of key performance metrics for academics. This study provides recent evidence of Australian accounting academics’ performance in publishing in A/A* journals during the period 2010–2018. We find that the top 25 percent of Australian academics produce approximately 60 percent of published journal articles through an analysis of the A/A* Australian Business Deans′ Council (ABDC) accounting journal listing. The majority of published Australian co‐authored research output in the sample is in A ranked journals (80 percent), with only 20 percent observed in A* ranked journals.     

Accounting Journal Rankings,Authorship Patterns and the Author Affiliation Index

We conduct an evaluation of 43 accounting journals using the author affiliation index (AAI). Our results suggest that the Australian Business Dean's Council (ABDC) ratings are consistent with the AAI‐based rankings. Nonetheless, there are a few highly (lowly) regarded accounting journals in terms of AAI receiving a relatively lower (higher) rating in the ABDC journal ranking list. The co‐authorship patterns suggest that top AAI and near‐top AAI journals actually see more co‐authorship from scholars in top programs and scholars in other programs (both ranked 21–100 and ‘others’).     

Benchmarks for evaluating the research productivity of accounting faculty

This study reports comprehensive data on both the quantity and quality of research productivity of 3878 accounting faculty who earned their accounting doctoral degrees from 1971 to 1993. Publications in 40 journals were used to measure faculty publication quantity. Journal ratings derived from a compilation of the rankings of five prior studies and co-authorship were used to measure publication quality. Choosing benchmarks for an individual faculty requires users of our data to determine four parameters: (1) what credit to give a faculty member for co-authored articles; (2) what level of journal quality is appropriate, e.g. presenting benchmarks for publications in the Best 4, Best 12, Best 22 and Best 40 journals; (3) choosing appropriate levels of performance, e.g. considering the publication record in the top 10%, top 20%, top 25%, top 33%, or top 50% of all faculty; and (4) deciding the emphasis to place on the number of years since the doctoral degree was earned. We believe that this is the first set of benchmarks that allows administrators to state, with some justification, a required number of articles for tenure or promotion. In addition, we discovered that the average number of authors per article is significantly correlated with time and growing at a pace of 0.017 authors per article per year.     

Who Is Publishing? An Analysis of Finance Research Productivity in the European Region

This study ranks the research productivity in finance across European universities and researchers using a set of 15 finance journals during the decade of the 1990s. A total of 219 universities are ranked. During the sample period from 1990 to 1999, UK universities dominate the top-20 ranking. However, the UK 's dominance is significantly reduced when the Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, a UKbased journal, is excluded from the analysis. Other non-UK European universities gain further ground when only the top-4 journals are used to measure ranking. Our analysis also shows that a majority of the top 20 European universities have made significant progress in research productivity over the period 1990–99. Additionally, we compare the top European universities to those in North America. The top European university, London Business School, compares to the 24th and 25th ranked North American universities for the period from 1990 to 1999; it compares to the 15th and 16th ranked North American universities for the more recent sub-period from 1995 to 1999. The top researcher is Henri Servaes from London Business School.     

Social accounting research: An Australasian perspective

This paper provides an insight into the nature and the extent of social accounting research being undertaken within Australasia. It demonstrates that Australasian researchers account for a significant amount of internationally published social accounting research, but emphasises that the research effort seems to be confined to a limited number of researchers perhaps reflecting a lack of ‘take-up’ in this area in terms of the scale of participation. Information is also presented about the relative propensity of journals within the sample to publish social accounting research, and identifies that ‘top tier’ accounting journals historically have not published social accounting research. The paper also considers various factors which seem to be impeding the ‘recruitment’ of new social accounting researchers.     

UK Accountants' Perceptions of Research Journal Quality

The process of research quality assessment is now firmly established in UK universities. The quality of the journals in which academic papers are published is an important input to the assessment process. The relative quality of these journals is clearly difficult to establish in an objective manner. This paper contributes to the debate about relative quality by conducting a peer review. Eighty-eight UK accounting academics reported their degree of familiarity with, and perceptions of quality of, a total of 44 journals in the accounting and finance discipline. Accounting and Business Research and theBritish Accounting Review were the two most familiar academic journals. The most highly ranked journals were generally from the US.     

Author Affiliation Index, finance journal ranking, and the pattern of authorship

In this paper we use a new method to rank finance journals and study the pattern of authorship/co-authorship across journals. Defined as the ratio of articles authored by faculty at the world's top 80 finance programs to the total number of articles by all authors, the Author Affiliation Index is a cost-effective and intuitively easy-to-understand approach to journal rankings. Forty-one finance journals are ranked according to this index. If properly constructed, the Author Affiliation Index provides an easy and credible way to supplement the existing journal ranking methods. Our ranking system reveals the journal–researcher clientele, and we find that collaboration (co-authoring) between faculty within elite programs exists only in top-tier and near-top-tier journals. Publications in lower-tier journals by researchers of elite programs are driven by their co-authors. Collaboration between faculty in elite and non-elite programs, however, is more prevalent than that within elite programs across all tiers of journals. Co-authorship among top 80 programs, nevertheless, is more common in top-tier journals, while co-authorship between top 80 and other programs is more dominant in lower-ranked journals.     

Ranking Research Productivity in Accounting for Asia-Pacific Universities

Using a set of 18 accounting journals and a sub-set of top five journals from 1991 to 2002, we rank the research productivity in accounting for a total of 119 Asia-Pacific universities. For the whole sampling period, the top five universities are the University of New South Wales, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Nanyang Technological University, the University of Sydney, and City University of Hong Kong. A number of prominent universities with long school history are not ranked in the top 20. During the second half of the sampling period, Hong Kong and Singaporean universities have shown the most improvement while some Australian universities have exhibited decline in research output. Also, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology replaces University of New South Wales as the first-ranked university in the period of 1997–2002. When compared with other North American universities, the accounting productivity of the top 20 Asia-Pacific institutions is comparable with that of leading universities in North America. The comparison is even more favorable to the Asia-Pacific universities during the period of 1997–2002.     

A pragmatic model to estimate journal quality in accounting

This article presents a model to estimate the relative quality of publication outlets based on objective journal characteristics. Our model improves upon the one proposed by Bean and Bernardi [Bean, D. F., & Bernardi, R. A. (2005). Estimating the ratings of journals omitted in prior quality ratings. Advances in Accounting Education, 7, 109–127.] in three important ways. First, we develop a dependent variable that is a composite score based on five prior journal perception studies. Second, our model considers different independent variables; audience, journal availability, inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation Index (an independent measure of quality), and the journal’s submission fee. This combination of variables increases the model’s explanatory power by 21% compared to Bean and Bernardi’s average R². Finally, the results of our model are more consistent with those of prior perception studies. We also apply the model to recent accounting faculty publications, which provides a comparative rating of more than 200 journals. We expect our model for estimating journal quality to help faculty, promotion and tenure committees, and university administrators evaluate the quality of journals where accounting faculty publish, an important aspect of assessing research productivity.     

World Ranking of Real Estate Research: Recent Changes in School Competitiveness and Research Institutions

Real estate programs are ranked based upon page counts of articles published in three major real estate journals. The page counts are employed to capture many variations in the length of articles. For each author, his/her most recent affiliation is used to evaluate the school competitiveness of current faculty members rather than a perceived school reputation of the past. In this study, we find that top-tier schools in real estate research are not necessarily the most famous schools in economics and finance; progressive universities specializing in real estate research hold the top ranks. Furthermore, school competitiveness has changed substantially in the United States. The changes are mainly because of a mobility of faculty members. The results also show that U.S. institutions dominate research in real estate.     

Accounting Ph.D. program graduates: affiliation performance and publication performance

We examine the affiliation performance and publication performance of 1991–1997 accounting Ph.D. graduates. We define affiliation performance as whether or not an individual is employed at a school with an accounting program ranked by Trieschmann et al. (Academy of Management Journal 43:1130–1141, 2000). We define publication performance in two ways, whether or not the Ph.D. graduate published in at least one of: (1) three premier accounting journals, and (2) a broader set of eight accounting journals. We examine the influence of the institutional status (private versus public) of the graduating institution on both affiliation performance and publication performance. We examine the institutional status both unconditionally and conditionally on four article types published in three premier journals: (1) articles from Ph.D. dissertations, (2) co-authored articles with degree-school faculty, (3) co-authored articles with degree-school Ph.D. students, and (4) co-authored articles with affiliated faculty. We show that accounting graduates of private schools are more likely to be affiliated with higher ranked schools, but they are not more likely to publish in the premier journals or the broader set of eight journals.

Ethnographic Accounting Research: Field Notes from the Frontier

Ethnographic fieldwork in accounting is scarce and remains a “frontier” methodology, unfamiliar to most accounting researchers. Building on our field research project on corporate accountability and stakeholder engagement, set in the Canadian Arctic, we illustrate in this article the use and explanatory power of ethnographic methods for studying social groups and individual actors in the broader accounting universe. We share our fieldwork strategies and provide a few practical tips for conducting ethnographic research in both corporate and community environments. We then argue that ethnographies provide accounting researchers with untapped opportunities to discover vast reservoirs of knowledge inaccessible to other research methods, and offer a path to humanize accounting research.     

Job Market Signaling: What Drives the Productivity of Finance Ph.D.s?

We study the research productivity of new finance Ph.D.s as measured by the number of quality publications. A commonly accepted notion is that the highest ranked schools produce the candidates with the greatest potential for high‐quality publications. Our results, however, find publications or revisions in top‐tier journals during the doctoral program are a stronger measure of potential research productivity than the school attended. Our findings demonstrate how candidates outside of the top schools can signal their future research productivity. Even though we examine the specialized labor market, our results have broader implications for markets outside academics.     

Finance Research Productivity and Influence

This study examines differences in finance research productivity and influence across 661 academic institutions over the five-year period from 1989 through 1993. We find that 40 institutions account for over 50 percent of all articles published by 16 leading journals over the five-year period; 66 institutions account for two-thirds of the articles. Influence is more skewed, with as few as 20 institutions accounting for 50 percent of all citations to articles in these journals. The number of publications and publication influence increase with faculty size and academic accreditation. Prestigious business schools are associated with high publication productivity and influence.     

An examination of the peer review process in accounting journals

An anonymous survey of university accounting faculty was conducted to assess current perceptions of the peer review process in accounting journals. The responses revealed that (a) most respondents are fairly positive about the peer review process, especially the process being fair/unbiased and improving the quality of research; (b) the most serious perceived threats to review process integrity involve reviewer misconduct (e.g., delaying reviews for self-interest or rejecting papers for revenge); (c) editors allowing excessive delays in the process and institutional favoritism by editors are seen as the most prevalent issues; (d) editors/associate editors of high-level or top-tier journals are most positive about the review process, while assistant professors, those at doctoral-granting institutions, and those submitting to top-tier journals are least positive; and (e) respondents’ suggestions for improving the review process emphasize improving timeliness, reducing favoritism, and reconsidering the notion of blind reviews (some consider blind reviews to be impossible, but others want to ensure that reviews are blind). Based on the results and other sources, we offer a proposed starting point for a peer review code of conduct for accounting journals.     

An analysis of working capital efficiency and shareholder return

Since 1997, CFO Magazine has published a ranking of 1000 companies in its “Working Capital Scorecard.” Our research explores the question as to whether working capital management practices based on the accounting metrics used by CFO Magazine serve as a basis for investor-based strategies for superior return generation. We examine the stock performance of top ranked companies from 1997 to 2012 against benchmark portfolios. Controlling for market, market capitalization, book to market, momentum factors, liquidity factors, and corporate governance; the higher ranked firms produce statistically higher excess returns than bottom ranked firms. In bull market periods, firms with superior working capital management outperformed their counterparts on a raw and risk-adjusted basis. These top ranked firms also provide statistically significant active returns regardless of market cycle. In sum, our results indicate that shareholders reward firms with superior working capital management strategies with higher raw and risk-adjusted performance over longer holding periods across the economic cycle especially in bear markets cycles.