Characterizing Accounting Research

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Derek K. Oler, Mitchell J. Oler, and Christopher J. Skousen

SYNOPSIS: In response to concerns over the viability of the academic discipline of accounting, we investigate trends in accounting research by examining papers pub-lished in six top accounting journals from 1960 to 2007. We use citations made by accounting papers as a proxy for their antecedent ideas and examine trends in cita-tions, topics, and methodologies, in aggregate and by journal. Our results suggest that the growing body of accounting research draws increasingly from both finance and economics. Financial accounting topics and archival methodologies are becoming more dominant over time relative to other topics and methodologies, although these trends vary by journal. Though most concerns we discuss are recent, we find that the situation today is the result of trends set in motion decades ago with an explicit decision by influential researchers to move the discipline from a normative perspective to a positive perspective. Given its current state, accounting research may be broadly characterized as research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing, analyz-ing, verifyanalyz-ing, and reporting standardized financial information, and on the effects of reported information on economic events.

INTRODUCTION

A

ccounting research has emerged as a literature that draws from and adds to a larger body

of work dealing primarily with businesses and their interactions with society at large, often through capital markets. Several researchers have identified threats to accounting as an academic discipline, and some question its future viability. Others have noted the gap that often exists between academics and practitioners in accounting. We offer an alternative approach to examining these threats and concerns, and an approach to characterizing accounting research, by 共1兲 examining its antecedent seminal ideas, proxied by the papers cited by research published in six top accounting journals; 共2兲 examining the general topics covered; and 共3兲 examining the general methodologies used. We summarize trends in citations, topics, and methodologies from 1960 to 2007, both in aggregate and by journal. We conclude by proposing a characterization of accounting research based on our observations.

Derek K. Oler is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University, Mitchell J. Oler is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Christopher J. Skousen is an Assistant Professor at Utah State University.

The authors thank Tom Dyckman, Michael Gibbins, Bill Kinney, Kenny Reynolds, Stephen Zeff, Anthony Hopwood, Dana Hermanson, two anonymous reviewers, and participants at the 2007 BYU Accounting Research Symposium and the 2009 American Accounting Association Annual Meeting for helpful comments on prior versions of this paper. All remaining errors are our own. We also thank Laura Oler for her programming assistance. We are grateful to Kevin Federico, Robert Brandt, Kara Brandt, Monte Searle, and Brian Watson for their research assistance.

Accounting Horizons American Accounting Association

Vol. 24, No. 4 DOI: 10.2308/acch.2010.24.4.635

2010 pp. 635–670

Submitted: March 2010 Accepted: April 2010 Published Online: December 2010 Corresponding author: Derek K. Oler Email: [email protected] 635

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Researchers have raised significant concerns about the viability of accounting research as an academic discipline.Fogarty and Markarian共2007兲argue that the academic accounting profession is in decline because there are shrinking numbers of accounting researchers at the assistant and associate professor levels. Their results are consistent with Plumlee et al. 共2005兲 and Leslie 共2008兲. One implication of these studies is that, ceteris paribus, fewer accounting research papers will be published over time as the number of researchers declines.

Another concern, raised byHopwood 共2007兲, is that accounting research is becoming more

insular and self-referential共also see,Biehl et al. 2006兲. This concern suggests that the proportion of citations from other fields will decrease over time because more recent accounting research ignores new ideas from other literatures. We examine trends in the relative proportion of ideas in accounting research being drawn from other disciplines to determine the extent to which account-ing seems to be becomaccount-ing more insular.Rayburn共2005,2006兲 expresses concern over the increas-ing dominance of financial accountincreas-ing research topics in academic journals, andTuttle and Dillard 共2007兲 find a strong trend in publications in The Accounting Review toward more financial ac-counting papers and fewer papers on other topics. We investigate whether this trend extends to other journals. Specifically, we examine Accounting, Organizations and Society 共AOS兲,

Contem-porary Accounting Research 共CAR兲, Journal of Accounting and Economics 共JAE兲, Journal of

Accounting Research共JAR兲, Review of Accounting Studies 共RAST兲, and The Accounting Review

共TAR兲. These journals are currently and commonly viewed as top-tier publications at research-intensive U.S. schools. Two of these journals, AOS and CAR, are not based in the United States and publish a greater proportion of papers by non-U.S. academics. To enhance comparisons between our journals, we exclude papers without at least one U.S. author.

Accounting research intersects with a number of neighboring disciplines, primarily finance, economics, psychology, and management. Building onZeff 共1996兲, we classify citation sources into eight categories: accounting, finance, economics, psychology, management, statistics, other academic journals, and other citations共i.e., books, professional journals, working papers, popular media, legal cases, etc.兲. We classify the topics covered by accounting papers into six categories: financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other topics.1 We classify the research methodologies used into seven categories: archival, experimental, field study, review, survey, theoretical共often referred to as analytical兲, and normative.2These are broad cat-egories, but we believe they are adequately descriptive while remaining reasonably digestible.3In cases where a paper addresses multiple topics, or uses multiple methodologies, we select the primary topic and primary methodology for our classifications. We provide an expanded descrip-tion of our categories in the Appendix.

Our results indicate that the nature of accounting research has changed significantly over the past 48 years. The most radical shift has been from the dominance of normative research in the

1 _{Prior research in auditing and management accounting may also be considered governance research; however, we define}

governance research here as research relating to the overall corporate management, as opposed to a firm’s system of internal controls. While some governance papers occurred prior to theGompers et al.共2003兲paper, we note that most governance research builds on their work. Our selection of governance is also an example of a newer “hot” topic that is essentially borrowed from economics.

2 _{We note that our terms for methodology are not parallel: archival, experimental, and field study methodologies are}

examples of positive research共the study of what is兲, and theoretical work is similar 共the study of what is, from the perspective of mathematical logic, although one could also consider theoretical work to be normative as well兲. Norma-tive research deals with what ought to be共seeKeynes, 1891, 34兲. “Review” is not really a methodology, but rather a summation and synthesis of prior work.

3 _{Our selection of topics and methodologies, while consistent with prior work, is open to criticism. For example,}_Abbott

共2004兲provides a taxonomy of 36 different methodologies, compared to our seven. However, increasing our categories has the adverse effect of increasing the complexity and size of the paper, making it more difficult to group the thousands of papers we examine into tractable categories.

636 Oler, Oler, and Skousen

Accounting Horizons December 2010

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1960s to positive research from the mid-1970s onward. This shift seems to continue to guide the trajectory of accounting research today. The total number of papers published by the top account-ing journals has increased dramatically from 1960 to 2007, mostly because of new journals beaccount-ing inaugurated and later commonly accepted as “A” journals. We also break out paper counts by individual journal, and find that research production overall has not decreased. Accounting papers currently draw just under 50 percent of their antecedent ideas from other prior accounting work 共Table1兲, and this ratio has remained consistent since the mid-1990s. Borrowing from finance and economics has been slowly but steadily increasing. Financial accounting research has remained the dominant topic of research, and is becoming increasingly so.Tuttle and Dillard共2007兲find that this trend occurs in TAR; we show that the trend extends to other top journals except for AOS and

CAR.

Papers in our six accounting journals indicate a different mix of citations, topics, and meth-odologies. For example, RAST papers cite other accounting papers 50 percent of the time on average from its 1996 inception to 2007, and cite psychology papers only 0.2 percent of the time, compared with AOS papers, which cite accounting papers 30 percent of the time and psychology papers only 9.4 percent of the time. Differences in citations reflect significant differences in topic and methodology: from inception to 2007, 22 percent of CAR’s papers focus on audit issues, compared to 3.8 percent of RAST’s. Papers dealing with financial accounting make up an increas-ing proportion of the total papers published in almost all journals from their inception through today except for AOS and CAR. In terms of methodology, archival research is becoming more dominant in all journals.

Our results have several implications. First, although the number of accounting “A” journals and the number of total accounting publications have increased significantly over time, when our results are considered in conjunction withPlumlee et al.共2005兲andLeslie共2008兲, warning signs emerge. The increase in output does not appear to be attributable to a general increase in research-ers, but rather to 共1兲 a slight increase in researchers at doctoral-granting schools, and 共2兲 a significant increase in the amount of time spent on research 共Leslie 2008兲. But faculty cannot indefinitely increase their time devoted to research. The large unmet demand for auditing and taxation Ph.D.s noted by Plumlee et al. 共2005兲 corroborates our finding that the proportion of auditing and taxation papers has decreased in the 2000s relative to prior decades. This decrease in the number of publications and researchers in audit and tax is especially disconcerting to auditing firms, who look to academics to supply new generations of CPAs共Solomon 2008兲.

The Final Report of the Treasury’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession also reflects concern about the adequacy of both the near- and long-term supply of doctoral faculty given the anticipated pace of faculty retirements共Levitt and Nicolaisen 2008兲, especially for audit

and tax. The recent AICPA Accounting Doctoral Scholars Program 共announced in July 2008兲

should help to counteract this trend by encouraging and funding CPAs who wish to obtain Ph.D.s and pursue auditing or tax.

Over time, citations from finance and economics have increased, suggesting that accounting research is drawing closer to these related disciplines and moving away from audit and tax. This is consistent with the shift in accounting research from primarily normative research in the 1960s to positive research that uses methods from finance, economics, and other established academic disciplines 共Granof and Zeff 2008兲. Citations from psychology, statistics, and management are relatively low in the 2000s when compared to prior years. The increasing dominance of financial accounting research is also consistent with the observations of Tuttle and Dillard 共2007兲 and Plumlee et al.共2005兲. It is important to note that the selection of papers published in any journal is jointly determined by the authors共who determine the topic, methodology, and where to submit

Characterizing Accounting Research 637

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TABLE 1

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journalsa

Year Acctg. Fin. Econ. Psych. Stats. Mgnt.

Other Acad. Jrnls. Other Citations Papers with No Citations Total Number of Papers 1960 29.7% 1.9% 1.3% 0.0% 0.0% 2.3% 4.6% 60.3% 15 57 1961 31.2% 2.5% 1.1% 0.0% 2.3% 1.7% 1.1% 60.1% 16 60 1962 24.2% 0.8% 2.1% 0.1% 0.0% 0.8% 0.8% 71.2% 20 70 1963 27.5% 1.5% 1.6% 0.2% 0.1% 2.5% 10.3% 56.4% 14 88 1964 27.7% 3.8% 2.6% 0.4% 1.0% 2.7% 10.9% 50.9% 17 93 1965 29.7% 0.7% 1.6% 0.0% 0.4% 2.6% 5.6% 59.4% 10 72 1966 28.1% 2.1% 2.5% 0.0% 1.4% 2.6% 8.0% 55.3% 16 87 1967 33.0% 4.7% 2.7% 0.3% 2.4% 4.9% 5.2% 46.7% 18 80 1968 42.7% 4.3% 1.5% 0.1% 0.7% 3.9% 3.0% 43.8% 12 90 1969 41.1% 2.5% 2.7% 2.0% 2.0% 5.3% 4.1% 40.3% 8 95 1970 40.0% 5.9% 3.3% 0.6% 1.5% 5.3% 2.7% 40.6% 4 83 1971 25.4% 6.4% 3.5% 1.5% 0.7% 4.5% 4.1% 54.0% 6 87 1972 30.1% 6.2% 3.8% 3.4% 3.1% 3.5% 2.8% 47.1% 5 86 1973 36.7% 6.4% 2.6% 2.5% 0.9% 3.7% 1.6% 45.7% 1 73 1974 34.2% 5.7% 6.5% 3.0% 1.8% 1.6% 2.8% 44.5% 5 68 1975 37.6% 6.7% 3.1% 3.6% 1.4% 5.2% 0.1% 42.3% 1 62 1976 31.7% 7.6% 4.8% 6.0% 0.6% 7.9% 0.7% 40.6% 4 87 1977 34.7% 5.6% 4.4% 6.3% 0.8% 9.8% 1.0% 37.3% 3 96 1978 35.3% 11.7% 5.0% 2.1% 1.3% 5.5% 0.2% 38.8% 2 79 1979 31.6% 8.2% 6.8% 3.8% 0.6% 4.9% 0.3% 43.7% 2 89 1980 35.1% 8.2% 7.7% 6.1% 0.2% 4.7% 0.4% 37.6% 1 90 1981 25.6% 10.0% 8.1% 6.7% 0.4% 5.8% 0.7% 42.6% 2 97 1982 37.6% 7.8% 5.2% 6.4% 1.2% 3.4% 0.4% 38.0% 1 113 1983 34.0% 8.8% 6.1% 6.3% 0.6% 7.4% 0.4% 36.3% 1 86 1984 36.3% 10.4% 5.6% 5.3% 1.0% 3.5% 0.4% 37.6% 0 107 1985 35.9% 8.6% 9.8% 3.7% 0.9% 3.2% 0.6% 37.4% 4 121 1986 44.0% 8.4% 6.2% 2.5% 1.0% 6.1% 1.6% 30.2% 0 99 1987 39.2% 8.7% 9.4% 2.5% 0.9% 2.1% 0.6% 36.7% 0 101 1988 44.3% 6.9% 7.9% 3.3% 0.5% 5.5% 0.9% 30.6% 0 108 1989 43.3% 9.0% 7.8% 3.9% 0.2% 1.7% 0.7% 33.5% 1 116 1990 39.8% 9.7% 10.4% 2.6% 0.6% 3.2% 0.8% 32.9% 3 152 1991 39.8% 9.3% 10.8% 2.1% 0.3% 1.9% 1.6% 34.2% 5 115 1992 42.2% 8.4% 7.7% 3.2% 1.3% 3.1% 1.0% 33.0% 2 120 1993 37.9% 10.7% 8.9% 2.9% 3.2% 2.1% 1.0% 33.2% 0 122 1994 42.2% 8.7% 8.2% 1.5% 2.8% 1.2% 1.7% 33.7% 3 121 1995 38.9% 6.6% 13.3% 2.3% 2.6% 3.6% 1.4% 31.2% 0 119 1996 45.7% 8.0% 7.7% 1.3% 1.8% 1.1% 1.0% 33.4% 1 131 1997 47.9% 7.9% 4.7% 2.4% 0.3% 1.6% 0.6% 34.5% 7 127 1998 44.7% 7.6% 8.3% 1.0% 0.2% 1.2% 2.4% 34.5% 2 119 1999 49.1% 9.5% 10.0% 1.6% 0.0% 1.9% 1.0% 26.8% 2 152 2000 45.5% 10.0% 8.4% 2.0% 0.2% 2.1% 0.5% 31.3% 0 118 2001 48.1% 8.2% 6.0% 2.2% 0.1% 1.8% 0.2% 33.3% 1 125 2002 48.4% 11.2% 8.0% 1.5% 0.1% 1.8% 0.3% 28.7% 0 171 2003 49.9% 13.2% 7.6% 1.2% 0.2% 1.1% 0.7% 26.1% 1 173 2004 48.9% 13.7% 8.3% 1.2% 0.0% 2.3% 0.8% 24.8% 1 157

(continued on next page)

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their paper兲, reviewers, and editors 共who determine which papers to accept and publish based on the papers that are submitted兲. Thus, our research should not be interpreted as a criticism of the editorial choices of particular journals.

Another important caveat is that we do not consider all accounting journals. Researchers specializing in tax or audit will likely place some of their work in topical journals such as the

Journal of the American Tax Association or Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory. However,

these are not generally accepted as “A” publications in top U.S. schools. Researching academics, especially those currently untenured, recognize that a publication in one of our selected journals is very helpful, and often essential, to attaining tenure. Our choice of six top accounting journals implicitly assumes that the choices made by submitting authors, reviewers, and editors of these journals reflect a representative sample of accounting research.4

Based on our observations, we construct a possible characterization of accounting research: Accounting research is research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing, analyzing, verifying, and reporting standardized financial information, and on the effects of re-ported information on economic events.

This characterization is necessarily broad, reflecting the diversity of papers published over the past 40 years. We also emphasize that this characterization is a reflection of what has been published as accounting research, and not necessarily what accounting research should be.

Our results are useful to researchers in deciding where to submit their work. Students, ad-ministrators of Ph.D. programs in accounting, and accounting professionals may wish to use our results in making decisions on resource allocations, especially toward encouraging and expanding audit and tax research. Accounting Ph.D. students may benefit from our long-term overview of accounting research and how it has changed over time. Finally, our results are also useful for

4 _{We also note that our selection of journals is “backfilled”—that is, we include all prior issues of newer journals, even}

before they came to be commonly accepted as “A” journals. Because the inclusion of a journal on an “A” list is determined by individual schools at different times, we cannot provide a definitive date as to when AOS, CAR, JAE,

JAR, and RAST became “A” journals共we assume that TAR has always been considered an “A” journal兲. TABLE 1 (continued)

Year Acctg. Fin. Econ. Psych. Stats. Mgnt.

Other Acad. Jrnls. Other Citations Papers with No Citations Total Number of Papers 2005 46.9% 14.3% 7.2% 2.5% 0.1% 1.8% 0.6% 26.5% 0 144 2006 48.3% 13.5% 8.5% 1.4% 0.1% 1.2% 1.3% 25.7% 1 165 2007 47.2% 14.5% 8.5% 2.5% 0.3% 2.8% 1.0% 23.0% 0 143 Total Papers 218 5,114 Wtd. Avg. 40.2% 8.5% 6.8% 2.5% 0.8% 3.1% 1.6% 36.4%

a _{This table shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals}_{共Accounting, Organizations and} Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review兲 from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author.

Proportions are calculated based on the total citations listed per paper. “Other Academic Journals” represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines. “Other Citations” represents an aggregate of remaining citations共including working papers, books, popular media, and profes-sional journals兲. The weighted average is calculated based on the number of papers published in a given year.

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accounting practitioners in understanding the pressure on the education of the next generation of auditors and tax professionals, especially since it seems more difficult for audit/tax professors to publish their research in the top accounting journals.

Levitt and Nicolaisen共2008兲note that there is an underdeveloped bond between the account-ing profession and accountaccount-ing academia. Personal interactions between the authors and accountaccount-ing firm employees共including their former supervisors and co-workers in accounting firms兲 confirm that the typical CPA firm employee has a limited understanding of exactly what accounting academics do. Our overview of academic publications, and our proposed definition of accounting research, should help to alleviate this problem and to encourage additional discourse between accounting professionals and academics.

In the next section we expand on our motivation and review the prior literature. In the third section we review our data and methodology. In the fourth section we present our results and propose a current characterization of accounting research, and in the fifth section we conclude.

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION

Some papers are intuitively accounting 共e.g., “Required Disclosures in Financial Reports,” 关Schipper 2007兴兲, but others less clearly so 共e.g., “Tax Benefits as a Source of Merger Premiums in Acquisitions of Private Corporations,” 关Erickson and Wang 2007兴; “Industry Product Market

Competition and Managerial Incentives,” 关Karuna 2007兴; “Measuring Customer Relationship

Value: The Role of Switching Cost,”关Dikolli et al. 2007兴兲. One heuristic used by many researchers in deciding if their paper is “accounting,” and therefore where to submit their work, is to count citations: if the majority of citations are from accounting journals, then it is an accounting paper. This heuristic clearly works for the Schipper paper above共42 out of 44 citations from academic journals are from other accounting journals兲, but less so for Erickson and Wang 共only 9 out of 21 citations are from accounting journals兲.Beaver’s 共1968兲 seminal work in 1968 cites only 3 ac-counting papers out of 17 total citations: according to the citations-count heuristic, “The Informa-tion Content of Earnings Announcements” is a finance paper. This ad hoc analysis suggests that the citations-count heuristic alone cannot adequately define accounting research.

A simple approach to describing and conceptualizing accounting research is to look at papers published in top accounting journals. We look at six top journals 共AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR兲 for U.S. schools because a publication in one of these journals represents a highly sought after achievement that is required for tenure at top institutions and can often guarantee tenure at lower-tier institutions.5

Accounting journals do not explicitly define the term “accounting research.” TAR’s editorial policy is to publish articles “reporting results of accounting research” from “any accounting-related subject.” JAR’s first issue states that the journal “will be devoted to reporting the results of research activities in all areas of accounting” 共Shultz and Caine 1963兲. The inaugural issue of

RAST describes its mission as to provide “an outlet for significant academic research in

account-ing” where research “must contribute to the discipline of accounting.” Similarly, the inaugural issue of AOS discusses the need for research into “understanding the way in which all forms of

accounting information are actually used” 共Hopwood 1976, 2兲, suggesting that accounting

re-search could consider individuals’ response to accounting information. The lack of an explicit definition of accounting research does not suggest sloppy thinking or laziness; rather, it suggests that accounting research is hard to define.Hopwood 共2007兲argues that accounting research has

5 _{An elite university will often require six top-tier publications for someone to have a likely chance at tenure, and many}

other research-intensive schools will require two to four top-tier publications. Lower-tier schools have reduced tenure requirements, but typically pay less共Carcello 2007兲.

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changed over time; for example, pre-JAR 共1963兲 and pre-Ball and Brown 共1968兲, accounting research was largely normative共i.e., focusing on how economic events should be accounted for兲, but afterward positive research became more dominant and accounting research came to embrace the consequences of accounting in wider institutional settings 共focusing more on the effect of accounting information on economic events兲.6

Thus, looking at the effect of net income on stock prices seems to have become accounting research, where previously it was not. With Ball and

Brown, the contemporaneous shift toward positive research 共discussed by Reiter and Williams

关2002兴兲, and the explosion of archival research 共seeKothari 2001兲 accounting researchers seem to have partially annexed a literature that was previously in the realm of finance.7

Our paper seeks to provide a context within which to evaluate threats to共and concerns over兲 the profession, as well as an overview of accounting research, by examining prior work. We assume that papers published in top accounting journals are a faithful representation of the ac-counting literature, and that the prior work they cite is an effective proxy for their antecedents.8 That is, the papers cited by accounting research in top journals can give us insight into where seminal ideas in accounting are coming from and can help us characterize what accounting re-search is. Insights from investigating citations and trends in citations from published accounting research will also help us to evaluate threats to the profession identified by various researchers.

Threats to the Academic Accounting Profession

Fogarty and Markarian共2007兲recount changes in accounting faculty numbers from 1982 to 2002 and conclude that a decline in the number of assistant and associate accounting professors over that period indicates that the future of the academic discipline is in doubt.Leslie共2008兲finds a similar decline.Buchheit et al.共2002兲,Swanson 共2004兲, andSwanson et al.共2007兲report that accounting has the lowest proportion of faculty who publish in a top journal.9These results seem consistent withPlumlee et al.共2005兲,Fogarty and Markarian共2007兲, andLeslie共2008兲, because if it is more difficult for accounting researchers to obtain publications needed for tenure, then fewer potential accounting Ph.D. students may consider the field as a viable career.Plumlee et al.共2005兲 report expected shortages of accounting researchers for 2005–2008, especially in audit and tax 共and report no indication that this trend will reverse in the near future—see also Levitt and Nicolaisen关2008兴兲. If the number of active researchers decreases and acceptance rates at journals remain the same, then we should expect to see a corresponding drop in accounting papers pub-lished共especially in audit and tax兲. This expectation is corroborated byCarcello共2007兲, who notes that many accounting Ph.D. programs today welcome students with strong backgrounds in eco-nomics and finance as opposed to students with a professional background as a CPA. Such students are more likely to pursue a Ph.D. in financial accounting共as it is closer to their educa-tional foundations兲 and less likely pursue a Ph.D. in auditing or tax. Addieduca-tionally, accounting Ph.D.s granted to individuals with no practical experience in accounting can only widen the gulf between academics and professional accountants.

Another concern, perhaps best articulated byHopwood共2007兲, is that accounting research has grown more insular and less innovative over time. Williams 共1985兲 raises similar concerns. If correct, this concern should manifest itself in a reduction of citations from other literatures over time in accounting research.

6 _{Interestingly,}_{Ball and Brown}_共1968兲_{was rejected by TAR as a non-accounting paper}_共_{Dyckman and Zeff 1984}_兲. 7 _{This is a “two-way street” in that papers potentially considered accounting have also appeared in finance journals.} 8 _{Of course, citations do not have a one-to-one correspondence with ideas.}

9 _{Swanson et al.’s}_共2007兲_{set of accounting journals consists of CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR.}_{Buchheit et al.}_共2002兲_consider JAE, JAR, and TAR from accounting as well as top-tier journals from other business disciplines.

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Diversity within accounting research is also a concern共e.g.,Rayburn 2005,2006;Tuttle and Dillard 2007;Granof and Zeff 2008兲. If one topic or methodology becomes overly dominant to the detriment of other topics or methodologies, then the entire profession may suffer, as researchers focus on a shrinking set of “acceptable” papers.Granof and Zeff共2008兲note that developments in the 1960s, including a desire by accounting researchers to obtain more academic respectability from peers in other fields, have led to the unintended consequence of interesting accounting questions now being ignored because they cannot be addressed through currently accepted quan-titative and theoretical analysis. Their work is consistent withTuttle and Dillard共2007兲, who find that the field of academic accounting research is becoming more homogenized as it matures. Specifically, they find that the proportion of nonfinancial accounting papers published in TAR has decreased significantly from 1976 to 2006, and they find corroborating trends in papers winning the American Accounting Association Competitive Manuscript Award, downloads of working papers from the Social Sciences Research Network共SSRN兲 website, and accounting dissertations awarded. We investigate whether their findings extend to five other top accounting journals.

Related Prior Research

Similar to our paper, McRae 共1974兲 uses citations as a proxy for information transfers be-tween disciplines. He examines the proportion of citations in both academic and professional accounting journals from 1968 and 1969, and finds that accounting journals draw mostly from other business fields and also from economics and law.10Hofstedt共1976兲uses citations to compare

and contrast behavioral accounting research with capital markets research. Dyckman and Zeff

共1984兲examine citations as part of their review on the impact of JAR on academic accounting research. They also note that the pace of interdisciplinary borrowing by accounting research increased in the 1960s and 1970s.Brown and Gardner共1985兲use citations to assess the impact of

TAR, JAR, JAE, and AOS on CAR from 1976 to 1982.

Carnaghan et al. 共1994兲 profile CAR over its first 10 years. Similar to our approach, they provide a breakdown of papers by topic and methodology.11We extend their work by time frame and also by journal. Similarly,Stone共2002兲provides a breakdown of accounting publications by method and topic from 1989 to 1998 for AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR, and finds that the dominant topic and methodology over that period was financial accounting and archival, respectively.12We extend Stone in both years and journals covered. Buchheit et al.共2002兲 com-pare the proportionate publication rates for accounting, finance, management, and marketing, and find that the proportionate number of accounting faculty publishing in top accounting journals is significantly lower than the corresponding rates for other disciplines.13 More recently,Wakefield 共2008兲 uses citations to estimate the relative influence of 22 accounting research journals from 2000 to 2006. She finds the most influential journals are JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR, respec-tively, with RAST as the 9th most influential journal共see alsoLowe and Locke 2005;Bonner et al. 2006兲.

We extend a number of prior studies by examining a much longer time series of data and by expanding the set of accounting journals investigated. However, we do much more than merely extend prior work: We provide insight into long-term trends in top accounting journals, and ultimately help to inform the debate on the trajectory of accounting research and the status of the profession.

10_{Within the general heading of “business” his largest grouping is “other,” which unfortunately is not broken down further.}

His next largest business subcategory is finance.

11_{Their specific classifications for topic and methodology are also similar to our own.}

12_{As with}_{Carnaghan et al.}_共1994兲_{, Stone’s categories of topic and methodology are similar to ours.} 13_{Their results are corroborated by}_Swanson_共2004兲_and_{Swanson et al.}_共2007兲_.

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DATA AND METHODOLOGY

We review and collect data on all articles published in six top accounting journals: AOS, CAR,

JAR, JAE, RAST, and TAR.14We exclude letters, committee reports, book reviews, notes, and other articles not related to research.15We collect data as far back as 1960 for TAR共i.e., back to volume 35兲, and to the journal inauguration date for the other five 共JAR, 1963; AOS, 1976; JAE, 1979;

CAR, 1984; RAST, 1996兲.16Although we include non-U.S. journals共AOS and CAR兲, our primary focus is on the state of accounting research in the United States. Therefore, we restrict our analysis to papers with at least one U.S. author共except for our analysis on total papers published over time, where we plot total papers versus papers with at least one U.S. author兲.

We classify citations into eight major categories: accounting, finance, economics, psychology, management, statistics, other academic journals, and other citations共i.e., books, professional jour-nals, working papers, popular media, legal cases, etc.兲.17

An alternative approach would be to exclude nonacademic journal citations, but this would preclude our comparison of citations going

back to 1960, since many early articles did not cite other academic journals 共few academic

journals existed at the time兲. We include a large number of items in “other citations,” because books and working papers are more difficult to classify共e.g., should a book on business valuation be classified as “accounting” or “finance”?兲, and because of the diversity of other items cited 共e.g., professional journals, court cases, websites, etc.兲. A few papers, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, make no citations at all, and we exclude these papers from our citations analysis but not from our analysis of topic and methodology.18

We classify papers by topic using six categories: financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other topics共which captures a variety of topics, including educa-tion, research methodology issues, and history兲. Finally, we also classify papers by methodology: archival, experimental, field study, review, survey, theoretical, and normative共i.e., research argu-ing over what should be—and often advocatargu-ing a particular accountargu-ing treatment—as opposed to positive research兲. See the Appendix for further description.

Because we examine a 48–year time trend of changes in citations, topics, and methodologies, we add information on significant historical events affecting accounting. Our timeline is admit-tedly ad hoc, necessarily brief, and considers the creation of new academic journals, the introduc-tion of accounting and financial databases, changes in major accounting instituintroduc-tions, and publica-tions of seminal research.19

RESULTS

Table1 presents our results for proportionate citations by literature from 1960 to 2007. The period from 1960 to 1966 is characterized by relatively low proportionate citations from account-ing or other academic fields and very high proportionate citations from books, legal cases, court

14_{We include RAST in our set of journals because its rapid rise of influence makes it representative of newer trends in}

accounting research. Our informal polling among academics suggests that some schools view CAR as superior to RAST, and others consider RAST to be superior to CAR.

15_{For example, TAR featured articles sectioned under “Teacher’s Clinic” and “Education Research” headings until 1985,}

and we exclude these articles.

16_{We also include discussion papers, and classify them in the same topic and methodology as the paper they discuss unless}

clearly warranted otherwise共for example, a discussion paper on theoretical work that uses archival data to test the work’s implications兲.

17_{For simplicity, we refer to these areas as “categories;” however, we recognize that this is a coarse categorization.}

Economics, psychology, and mathematics may be more accurately described as disciplines; accounting, finance, statis-tics, and management may be more accurately described as applied fields.

18_{The listing of journal classifications is available from the authors.}

19_{For selecting seminal accounting papers, we use the top four accounting papers as of 1992 listed by}_Brown_共1996兲_{, plus}

Feltham and Ohlson共1995兲andSloan共1996兲.

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cases, and other sources, reflecting the practitioner-oriented early years of the discipline. However, starting with 1967, the proportionate citations in accounting papers from accounting journals begins to increase significantly.20At the same time, citations from finance, economics, and man-agement also begin to increase. For the most part these trends continue, but one exception is that citations from the management literature reached a high point of 9.8 percent in 1977 and have reverted back to early 1960s levels in subsequent years.

Figure1plots the same results in graphical form alongside our historical timeline.21To avoid clutter, we show only the top three categories共accounting, finance, and economics兲. The increase in accounting citations appears to have been precipitated by the launch of JAR in 1963 and the origination of CRSP and Compustat in 1964. Accounting citations accounted for between 30 and 40 percent of citations between 1972 and 1985共other than one exception in 1981兲, increased from 1986 to 2003, and have tapered off slightly since then. Citations from finance and economics have increased steadily from 1960 to 2007, with a few spikes共e.g., 1978 for finance, contemporaneous with the publication ofWatts and Zimmerman关1978兴, and a spike in economics citations in 1995 contemporaneous with the publication of Feltham and Ohlson 关1995兴兲.22 Citations from finance research reach their highest point in 2007, at 14.5 percent.

Overall, these results suggest that共1兲 current accounting research has a considerable founda-tion from which to draw, and if accounting has been growing more insular over time, the level of

insularity appears to have peaked in 2003; 共2兲 accounting research in general appears to be

drawing closer to finance and economics, but even by 2007, combined citations from finance and economics represent just under 25 percent of total citations. These trends are consistent with the rise of positive research, which has its roots in economics and finance.

Figure2plots the aggregate number of papers published by year in our accounting journals, with the same timeline as in Figure1. These results indicate that the number of accounting papers published has increased significantly since 1982 even thoughFogarty and Markarian共2007兲and Leslie共2008兲report a drop in accounting researchers. The increase is not monotonic共for example, there was a decrease from 1968 to 1975兲, but the upward trend from 1975 to 2007 is clear and appears to be associated with the introduction of new major journals. This apparent disconnect between our results on publications and prior work on the number of researchers can be explained by two factors: First,Leslie共2008兲reports a slight increase in accounting researchers at doctoral-granting schools 共although they also report a significant drop in researchers at four-year non-doctoral schools兲. As faculty at non-doctoral-granting schools are more likely to be research active 共because of higher research budgets and because of reduced teaching loads兲, the decrease in the number of researchers may not translate directly into a decrease in the number of publications. Second,Leslie共2008兲also finds that the number of hours spent on research reported by accounting faculty has increased by 52 percent from 1993 to 2004, suggesting that an increase in output-per-faculty is compensating for a decrease in the number of output-per-faculty. A breakout 共not provided兲 by individual journal reveals inconsistent trends in the number of papers published by year across the journals, with TAR, JAR, and AOS declining over time while CAR and RAST are increasing.

Table2, Panel A, examines citations sorted by research topic. The vast majority of papers fall into financial accounting共2,577, over three times the number published in managerial accounting, the next closest topic兲. Different topics draw from somewhat different categories. Auditing and

20_{We also note that, with the inauguration of JAR, proportionate citations to “Other Citations”}_{共mainly books and court}

cases兲 begin to decrease in 1963.

21_{We use several acronyms to conserve space. “EMH” stands for the efficient market hypothesis, “WRDS” stands for}

Wharton Research Data Services offered by the University of Pennsylvania, and “SOX” stands for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

22_{However, given the ad hoc nature of our timeline, we do not provide evidence on causality.}

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financial accounting draw proportionately more from prior accounting research than from other categories, at 44 percent for auditing and 43 percent for financial accounting; however, auditing draws the most from psychology at 5.1 percent.

The newest topic, corporate governance and control, draws the least from accounting and the most from economics 共consistent with the seminal paper in that field, Gompers et al. 关2003兴, published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics兲, as well as substantially from finance. Mana-gerial accounting draws significantly from economics, but relatively little from finance.

When broken out by topic and decade, Panels B to G, the results suggest a strong trend toward more accounting citations as accounting researchers take ownership of research streams and build on prior accounting papers in the area. Financial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other topics all show increased borrowing from finance, while managerial accounting has decreased its borrowing from finance. Borrowing from economics also increased from decade to decade across

FIGURE 1

Proportion of Citations Made by Top Accounting Journals

50.0% 60.0% 40.0% f Cit at ion s A ti 20.0% 30.0% P r op or ti on o f Accounting Finance Economics 10.0% 0.0% 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1963 JAR Launched 1968 Ball & Brown 19 0 1973 FASB replaces APB 1978 Watts & 1979 JAE Launched 1995 Feltham & Ohlson 1998 WRDS Launched 1985 Healy 1987 1964 Compustat Launched 1970 EMH Articulated by Eugene Fama 1978 Watts & Zimmerman 1984 CAR Launched 1996 Sloan; RAST Launched 2002 SOX Passed 1976 AOS Launched 1987 Hopwood 1960 CRSP Launched

This figure shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations listed in the paper. For brevity, only citations from accounting, finance, and economics are shown. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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most topics from the 1960s through to the 1990s, but tapered off for many topics from 2000 to 2007. Borrowing from statistics is small across all fields, and management research also plays a limited role for most topics except for management accounting共where it is declining兲.23

Table2, Panel B, shows that the number of financial accounting papers has increased signifi-cantly from the 1960s to the 2000s. Panels C to G show that managerial accounting, auditing, and tax have all decreased from the 1990s to the 2000s; governance has increased significantly in the

23_{Our finding on statistics is indicative of accounting research using primarily “tried and true” statistical methods. In many}

cases papers that show improved methodologies are published in finance journals共e.g.,Petersen关2009兴, published in the

Review of Financial Studies兲.

FIGURE 2 Number of Papers by Year

160 180 140 100 120 60 80 40 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1963 JAR Launched 1968 Ball & Brown 19 0 1973 FASB replaces APB 1978 Watts & 1979 JAE Launched 1995 Feltham & Ohlson 1998 WRDS Launched 1985 Healy 1987 1964 Compustat Launched 1970 EMH Articulated by Eugene Fama 1978 Watts & Zimmerman 1984 CAR Launched 1996 Sloan; RAST Launched 2002 SOX Passed 1976 AOS Launched 1987 Hopwood 1960 CRSP Launched

This figure shows the aggregate number of papers with at least one U. S. author published in six top accounting journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Ac-counting Standards Board, APB refers to the AcAc-counting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton, Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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TABLE 2

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Research Topica

Panel A: Citations by Topic

Topic

Number of

Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management

Other Academic Journals Other Citations Financial Accounting 2577 43.1% 12.2% 6.5% 1.2% 0.8% 1.3% 1.2% 33.8% Managerial Accounting 741 34.5% 4.1% 10.6% 4.3% 1.0% 9.2% 1.9% 34.4% Auditing 684 44.0% 1.8% 3.7% 5.1% 1.0% 1.8% 1.1% 41.5% Tax 237 36.3% 9.1% 8.6% 1.5% 0.6% 0.9% 1.3% 41.7% Control/Governance 34 27.6% 18.2% 13.8% 1.4% 0.1% 3.0% 1.3% 34.6% Other Topics 623 32.9% 5.6% 5.6% 3.5% 0.9% 5.6% 4.0% 42.0%

Panel B: Financial Accounting by Decade

Decade

Number of

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1960s 334 34.7% 3.0% 2.3% 0.2% 0.7% 1.8% 3.9% 53.3% 1970s 408 33.8% 10.2% 4.6% 1.8% 1.3% 3.1% 1.4% 43.8% 1980s 497 41.1% 13.8% 7.5% 2.3% 0.7% 1.2% 0.5% 32.9% 1990s 610 46.9% 13.0% 8.5% 1.0% 1.4% 0.9% 0.8% 27.5% 2000s 728 50.3% 15.6% 7.0% 0.6% 0.1% 0.6% 0.6% 25.1%

Panel C: Managerial Accounting by Decade

Decade

Number of

Char acterizing Accounting Resear ch 647 Accounting Horizons December 2010 American Accounting Association

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Panel D: Auditing by Decade

Decade

Number of

Panel E: Tax by Decade

Decade

Number of

Panel F: Control/Governance by Decade

Decade

Number of

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 1970s 1 8.0% 4.0% 0.0% 8.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 80.0% 1980s 2 6.7% 7.9% 39.3% 0.0% 0.0% 1.1% 0.0% 44.9% 1990s 6 26.0% 18.0% 9.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.2% 0.0% 42.8% 2000s 25 30.5% 19.6% 13.4% 1.5% 0.1% 3.0% 1.8% 30.0%

648 Oler , O ler , and Skousen Accounting Horizons December 2010 American Accounting Association

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Panel G: Other Topics by Decade

Decade

Number of

a _{This table shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals}_{共Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of}

Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review兲 from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S.

author, broken out by research topic共Panel A兲 then by decade for each topic 共Panels B to G兲. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations. “Other Academic Journals”

represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and “Other Citations” represents an aggregate of all

other citations共accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc.兲.

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2000s but still remains a relatively small topic.24Figure3 plots the relative proportion of papers by topic graphically, and emphasizes the increase in financial accounting papers, from about 42 percent in 1960 to about 65 percent in 2007. However, the most dramatic increase in financial accounting occurred around 1995, coinciding with the publication ofFeltham and Ohlson共1995兲, Sloan 共1996兲, and the founding of RAST in 1996. The portion of other topics has generally decreased in a similar manner: relative stability until around 1995, tapering off slightly thereafter. Table3breaks out papers by research methodology instead of topic. Because most financial accounting research is archival, our results show a similar dominance by archival research共the number of archival papers is over twice the next highest methodology, theoretical modeling兲. Archival research draws heavily from finance共at almost 15 percent, and Panel B shows that the trend is increasing over time兲. Theoretical research draws more from economics than other

meth-24_{Comparing absolute numbers can be misleading because we have only eight years of data from 2000 to 2007, versus ten}

years for the 1990s.

FIGURE 3

Proportion of Papers by Topic 80% 60% 70% 30% 40% 50% P rop or ti on FAMA Audit Tax Other 10% 20% 30% P 0% 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1963 JAR Launched 1968 Ball & Brown 19 0 1973 FASB replaces APB 1978 Watts & 1979 JAE Launched 1995 Feltham & Ohlson 1998 WRDS Launched 1985 Healy 1987 1964 Compustat Launched 1970 EMH Articulated by Eugene Fama 1978 Watts & Zimmerman 1984 CAR Launched 1996 Sloan; RAST Launched 2002 SOX Passed 1976 AOS Launched 1987 Hopwood 1960 CRSP Launched

This figure shows the proportionate number of papers published by topic in the top six accounting journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. If a paper covered more than one topic, then we selected the primary topic for purposes of categorization. Because gov-ernance topics make up a relatively low proportion of topics, for brevity govgov-ernance is excluded from this figure. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient Market Hypoth-esis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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TABLE 3

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Research Methodologya

Panel A: Citations by Methodology

Topic

Number

of Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management

Other Academic Journals Other Citations Archival 2134 45.3% 14.4% 6.2% 0.4% 0.7% 1.2% 0.9% 30.9% Experimental 745 36.7% 3.1% 5.0% 9.5% 1.0% 3.0% 1.3% 40.5% Field Study 66 27.6% 3.2% 5.0% 7.3% 0.1% 17.6% 1.8% 37.4% Review 124 41.8% 7.0% 5.9% 5.0% 0.9% 4.0% 1.1% 34.4% Survey 156 30.3% 3.1% 2.8% 8.0% 0.7% 13.0% 3.4% 38.8% Theoretical 844 40.0% 5.9% 14.6% 0.8% 1.2% 3.3% 1.1% 33.0% Normative 827 32.8% 2.6% 2.9% 1.7% 0.7% 4.9% 4.3% 50.1%

Panel B: Archival by Decade

Decade

Number

Panel C: Experimental by Decade

Decade

Number

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Panel D: Field Study by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 1970s 6 23.3% 11.3% 9.4% 16.4% 0.0% 27.9% 0.6% 11.0% 1980s 23 29.5% 2.3% 5.4% 10.0% 0.1% 20.9% 2.1% 29.9% 1990s 19 27.5% 1.4% 1.7% 4.3% 0.1% 11.9% 2.4% 50.7% 2000s 18 26.9% 3.5% 6.4% 3.9% 0.2% 16.2% 1.0% 42.0%

Panel E: Review by Decade

Decade

Number

Panel F: Survey by Decade

Decade

Number

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Panel G: Theoretical by Decade

Decade

Number

Panel H: Normative by Decade

Decade

Number

Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review兲 from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S.

author, broken out by research methodology共Panel A兲 then by decade for each method 共Panels B to H兲. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations. “Other Academic

Journals” represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and “Other Citations” represents an

aggregate of all other citations共accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc.兲.

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odologies共also at almost 15 percent兲 and experimental research draws significantly from psychol-ogy 共almost 10 percent兲. Field studies draw the least from prior accounting and are much more dependent on management. We find a similar result for survey papers.

Figure4 illustrates the time trend in the relative proportion of methodologies, and indicates the precipitous drop in normative research, from a high in 1963 to almost negligible by the mid-1980s, consistent with observations from Bricker and Previts 共1990兲, Reiter and Williams 共2002兲,Williams共2003兲, andGranof and Zeff 共2008兲. The period from 1968 to 1979 is charac-terized by roughly equal representation among all methodologies except normative, which declined.25However, roughly corresponding with the publication ofWatts and Zimmerman共1978兲 and the inauguration of the JAE in 1979, we see a growing dominance of archival research over

25_{We are ignoring reviews here, which may be viewed as a “pseudo-methodology” because they are concerned with}

summarizing and synthesizing prior research rather than discovering new knowledge. FIGURE 4

Proportion of Papers by Methodology 100% 70% 80% 90% A hi l 40% 50% 60% 70% Pr o p o rt ion Archival Experimental Theoretical Normative 10% 20% 30% 40% P 0% 10% 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1963 JAR Launched 1968 Ball & Brown 19 0 1973 FASB replaces APB 1978 Watts & 1979 JAE Launched 1995 Feltham & Ohlson 1998 WRDS Launched 1985 Healy 1987 1964 Compustat Launched 1970 EMH Articulated by Eugene Fama 1978 Watts & Zimmerman 1984 CAR Launched 1996 Sloan; RAST Launched 2002 SOX Passed 1976 AOS Launched 1987 Hopwood 1960 CRSP Launched

This figure shows the proportionate number of papers published by methodology in the top six accounting journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. If a paper used more than one methodology, then we categorized the paper by its primary methodology. Because field studies, reviews, and surveys make up a relatively low proportion of methodologies, for brevity they are excluded from this figure. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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other methodologies. This significant increase is preceded by the availability of significant data sets such as CRSP and Compustat, which allowed archival researchers to investigate questions that were previously only answerable using experimental or field study approaches. Over 1970 to 2007 we also see a slight decrease in theoretical research, and a more pronounced decrease for experi-mental research.26

Tables4–6break out citations, topics, and methodologies by journal, and help to characterize the “flavor” of each journal. Panel A in Table4gives an overview of citation sources by journal. Consistent with its name, JAE papers draw from economics共11 percent兲, but even more heavily from finance共18 percent兲. AOS draws the least from prior accounting work 共30 percent versus 39 percent for TAR, the next lowest兲 and draws the most from psychology and management. Panels B to F detail the trend in citations for each journal by decade. Each journal shows a strong trend toward citing prior accounting work 共except JAR which remains stable in accounting citations from the 1990s to 2000s, at 45 percent, coupled with a large increase in citations from finance兲.

Table5examines paper topics by decade and journal. The increasing dominance of financial accounting is evident in Panel A, along with the relative decline of managerial accounting, audit, and tax. Panel B breaks out topics by journal and indicates some stark differences. RAST publishes predominantly financial accounting papers 共with some managerial, but relatively few audit, tax, and governance papers兲. In contrast, AOS publishes proportionately more managerial accounting

papers than other journals 共34 percent to 16 percent, the next highest from TAR兲, and CAR

publishes proportionately the most audit research. Tax research makes up a relatively small portion of total research, with JAE publishing proportionately more tax research than the other journals. The drop in published research in audit and tax is consistent with the unmet demand for audit and tax researchers noted byPlumlee et al.共2005兲.

Breaking out trends by individual journal, CAR is the only journal to move contrary to the trend toward increasing financial accounting research 共64 percent of papers in the 1990s to 50 percent in the 2000s兲; all other journals have increased the proportion of financial accounting papers published. CAR also increased its proportion of managerial, audit, and tax papers, while

these topics have declined共or remained the same兲 for JAR, RAST, and TAR. AOS shows a small

increase in financial papers published共15 percent to 17 percent兲 but also shows a large jump in managerial research, from 27 percent to 41 percent. The aggregate number of governance papers published is small共34 papers, from Table2兲, and are published mostly by AOS and JAE.

Table 6 examines methodologies by decade and journal. Consistent with the increase in

financial accounting research noted in the prior tables, there is a strong trend toward proportion-ately more archival research, shown in Panel A. Normative research drops from being the domi-nant methodology in the 1960s to being almost nonexistent. Experimental work declined from a zenith in the 1980s, and theoretical work seems to have wide swings over time. Panel B reveals considerable variation by journal: JAE and RAST publish primarily archival papers; JAR, AOS, and

CAR publish relatively more experimental papers; RAST and CAR publish relatively more

theo-retical papers.

Panels C to G present the time trend for each journal. We find an increase in the relative proportion of archival research from the 1990s to the 2000s for almost all journals 共the only exception being JAE, which devoted its entire September 2001 issue to reviews兲. We also find a precipitous decline in experimental research in JAR, going from 25 percent in the 1970s down to 8 percent in the 2000s, but an increase in experimental research published in both CAR and AOS.

26_{This is consistent with two of the three new journals}_{共JAE and RAST兲 launched from 1979 to 1996 being strongly}

oriented toward archival research. Only CAR has published a significant number of experimental papers. JAE and RAST have published almost no experimental papers.

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TABLE 4

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals, by Journala

Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals

Journal

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations AOS 520 30.2% 4.3% 4.2% 9.4% 0.2% 13.5% 1.9% 36.2% CAR 527 48.0% 8.6% 8.8% 2.3% 2.9% 1.6% 1.3% 26.5% JAE 536 43.8% 18.1% 10.8% 0.1% 0.2% 0.8% 0.8% 25.4% JAR 1469 39.5% 9.0% 7.2% 2.2% 0.8% 1.7% 1.0% 38.7% RAST 208 49.8% 11.5% 9.6% 0.2% 0.2% 0.8% 1.8% 26.0% TAR 1636 39.0% 6.0% 4.8% 1.8% 0.8% 2.7% 2.5% 42.5%

Panel B: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1970s 59 27.9% 7.5% 5.4% 12.8% 0.1% 28.6% 2.0% 15.5% 1980s 193 30.4% 4.7% 4.8% 13.7% 0.3% 15.9% 1.7% 28.4% 1990s 169 28.6% 2.7% 2.5% 5.0% 0.0% 6.7% 2.6% 51.8% 2000s 99 34.1% 4.2% 5.5% 6.2% 0.1% 11.5% 1.2% 37.2%

Panel C: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1980s 101 41.2% 7.3% 9.7% 2.6% 1.2% 3.1% 1.8% 33.2% 1990s 237 47.8% 9.6% 10.0% 2.1% 5.8% 1.4% 1.9% 21.4% 2000s 189 52.0% 8.1% 6.6% 2.4% 0.1% 1.1% 0.4% 29.4%

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Panel D: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1970s 8 17.8% 20.6% 19.7% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 41.6% 1980s 102 37.1% 17.6% 11.3% 0.0% 0.2% 1.0% 0.1% 32.6% 1990s 228 45.7% 16.4% 10.3% 0.1% 0.2% 0.9% 0.4% 26.0% 2000s 198 46.2% 20.3% 10.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.5% 1.7% 20.2%

Panel E: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade

Decade

Number

Panel F: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1990s 59 43.6% 6.3% 12.9% 0.1% 0.3% 1.2% 4.6% 31.0% 2000s 149 52.2% 13.6% 8.3% 0.3% 0.1% 0.7% 0.7% 24.0%

Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1960s 499 33.0% 2.0% 1.4% 0.1% 1.0% 3.2% 6.3% 52.9% 1970s 379 35.0% 6.4% 3.7% 2.5% 1.3% 4.4% 1.7% 45.0% 1980s 199 37.1% 7.7% 6.0% 3.5% 0.8% 1.7% 0.4% 42.8%

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Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade

Decade

Number

Other Academic Journals Other Citations 1990s 266 42.6% 7.3% 10.0% 2.0% 0.5% 1.2% 0.4% 35.9% 2000s 293 52.1% 9.6% 6.6% 2.4% 0.2% 1.6% 0.5% 27.0%

Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review兲 for papers with at least one U.S. author, broken out by journal. Panel A presents aggregate results from 1960 to 2007. Panels B to G show proportions for each journal separately, by decade. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations. “Other Academic Journals” represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and “Other

Citations” represents an aggregate of all other citations共accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc.兲.