Ranking Accounting Journals by Topical Area and Methodology

Abstract

At many institutions, only a small subset of journals “count” for accounting faculty evaluations (e.g., the top 3/6 journals); yet, prior research shows that these journals are not necessarily reflective of the broad topical areas of accounting research and do not publish the most-cited papers in all topical areas. Therefore, this paper creates separate rankings of a set of respected accounting journals based on which journals publish the most highly cited articles in accounting information systems (AIS), audit, financial, managerial, tax, and other topical areas. We also create rankings by research methodologies, including analytical, archival, experimental, and other research methodologies. We find that for financial accounting, archival research, and analytical research, the top-3/6 characterization is descriptive of which journals publish the most-cited work. For all other topical areas and research methodologies, at least one additional journal is more highly ranked than the traditional top-3/6 characterization. Using a unique measure of attention by stakeholders outside of the academy, we find similar results; the traditional top journals are not publishing the most articles that receive attention in some topical areas. The results call into question whether institutions should rely solely on the traditional top 3/6 journal lists for evaluating research productivity.