Editorial

Abstract

Australian Accounting Review (AAR) enjoys a unique position as an accounting journal that is read and appreciated by practising accountants, those interested in accounting policy and practice, regulators and accounting academics. The articles published in AAR in 2022 have benefited from the goodwill of many significant participants in the world of accounting in our region and beyond. In this editorial, we reflect on our 2022 activities and provide highlights of the current issue. As co-editors-in-chief, we accepted 21 articles for publication in AAR during 2022. At the end of 2022, a further nine submissions were still under consideration by reviewers, and we were waiting for another seven articles to be returned following suggestions to the authors from reviewers. Submissions to the journal totalled 238 in 2022, including those invited to ‘revise and resubmit’. There were 189 new submissions. Of those new submissions, 143 (75%) were rejected by us as co-editors-in-chief and a further 18 (10%) submissions were rejected on the advice of expert reviewers. The timely impact of the research that AAR publishes is enhanced by articles being available on ‘early view’ as soon as they are prepared for publication, and by articles being increasingly available to the interested public as ‘Open Access’ publications. Of the 29 articles published in 2022, 12 were open access or similar. We encourage all authors who are affiliated with participating universities to make their articles available on Open Access. In 2022, as in 2021, AAR articles were downloaded over 100 000 times. We know that the increasing use of Open Access will only see this statistic increase. No one could accuse AAR research of gathering dust on a shelf! We also promote AAR research through social media posts and in emails to CPA Australia members. Those promotions focus on particular papers and take the form of individual posts on LinkedIn and CPA Australia member emails on particular topics. In 2023 AAR will continue to publish interesting and significant articles written by scholars and practitioners with strong international reputations. The current March issue leads with Penman (2023), a thought-provoking article proposing that essential differences between tangible and internally generated intangible assets imply different accounting treatments in order that financial reports are informative. Pavlatos and Kostakis (2023) show that during the pandemic, hospitals more affected by COVID-19 with better costing systems relied the most on budgets for planning, resource allocation and cost control. Under the UK FRC's expanded disclosures, Dwyer et al. (2023) find significant variations in benchmarks for audit materiality threshold disclosures, questioning whether the intended objective of increased transparency has been achieved. Identifying that charitable organisations are managed differently from profit-making organisations, Cyr et al. (2023) present a framework for understanding the motivations, limitations and objectives that guide managers’ decision making. Han et al. (2023) model and estimate how new information is incorporated into prices in an uncertain environment. Xiao and Xi (2023) find an association between the tax avoidance aggressiveness of Chinese listed firms and their institutional cross-ownership, suggesting that ownership may be a motivating factor.