Accounting Editorial Board Membership And Research Output

Abstract

The primary purpose of this article is to examine whether the university affiliation of faculty members on the editorial boards of three top academic accounting journals is related to the university affiliation of the faculty that publish in these journals. The journals selected The Accounting Review (AR); The Journal of Accounting Research (JAR); and, Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), were identified by Chan, et al. (2009) as the top three accounting research journals. The board members (as of January 1, 2007) of these three journals were categorized by university affiliation (both current employer and doctoral-degree granting), and cross referenced with the authors (including co-authors) of all main articles published in these three journals during the calendar years of 2007-2009. The results indicate that the majority of the authors at JAR and AOS had academic affiliations different from the editorial board members. In the AR, however, over 60% of the authors had the same academic affiliations as the 101 members of the AR editorial review board. Secondary results provide that a small handful of university affiliations dominate the U.S.-based journal boards, however this connection was not as strong in the non-U.S. AOS. Overall, less than 11% of AACSB accredited business programs are represented on these collective boards, although AACSB accounting specific accreditation does increase this ratio to a 14% representation.