This annual report describes the operations of The Accounting Review during the final year (6/1/2013–5/31/2014) of my three-year term as senior editor, with Stacy Hoffman as editorial assistant. The report represents the sixth edition of a reporting format adopted by the AAA in 2009. Along with summary statistics on The Accounting Review (TAR) operations, I will continue the tradition that Steve Kachelmeier started of providing a commentary for our constituents, particularly the AAA Publications Committee and Board of Directors, the new editorial team headed by Mark DeFond, with Elizabeth Garrett as Editorial Assistant, as well as co-editors, authors, reviewers, and readers of TAR and AAA members. Your comments and questions are welcome.Our third year continued the increasing reliance on the online AllenTrack system, which is evolving further under Mark and Elizabeth. For additional details on our operational processes during our regime, please see the 2013 TAR annual report (Evans 2013). That report also discusses the integrity of the academic research process and the integrity of peer-reviewed journals in that process. In my opinion, these issues become more important each year as more reports of fraudulent research in academic journals become public.To facilitate comparisons over time, the 2014 report follows the structure of the 2009–2013 reports. The annual TAR workflow has remained relatively consistent during the 2010–2014 period, after an initial adjustment in Steve Kachelmeier's first year in 2009.Table 1, Panel A reports TAR's comparative workflow statistics for the six years 2009–2014, with the data on a journal-year basis of June 1 through May 31 of the following year. Panel A shows that in 2014 the volume of new submissions increased by 7.3 percent from 543 in 2013 to 583 in 2014. During the first year of the Kachelmeier term, TAR experienced a surge of new submissions, followed by a slight decline in Steve's final two years. Our regime experienced a similar surge in our first year of 2012 relative to 2011, but even further growth in the final year of 2014. The year-over-year growth rates in new submissions versus the corresponding years in the preceding regime have been 2.0 percent, 8.2 percent, and 17.8 percent, respectively. This pattern of increases suggests a generally healthy position of the journal, in terms of this single measure of attracting new submissions. The other columns of Table 1, Panel A show that 2014 achieved new highs in the activity measures of total manuscripts available for evaluation (column (d)), decision letters sent (column (e)) and ending inventory of manuscripts (column (f)).Next, to permit comparability to years before 2009, Table 1, Panel B provides data on a calendar year (CY) basis beginning in 1998. Panel B indicates that the total of 561 new manuscripts submitted to The Accounting Review in CY2013 is exceeded only by the 582 new submissions in CY2011. The third and fourth columns of Table 1, Panel B track how the increased submissions prompted corresponding increases from four TAR issues annually in 2005 to six issues annually starting in 2008, and associated growth in the total annual published pages.Table 2, Panel A reports the editorial outcomes communicated in the total decision letters (column (a)) generated during each of the fiscal or journal years 2009–2014. The final two columns of Panel A of Table 2 use the data in columns (a) to (d) to generate two estimated annual “acceptance rates” for each of the last six fiscal years. For 2014, Acceptance Rate 1 in column (e) divides the 81 acceptances and conditional acceptances in 2014 by the 81 (column (d)) + 466 (column (b)) = 547 “final outcome” decisions, yielding the Acceptance Rate 1 of 14.8 percent. Acceptance Rate 2 in column (f) retains the same 81 acceptances in 2014 in the numerator but now adds to the denominator the 239 “Revise and ‘Uncertain' Decisions” in 2014, which yields an Acceptance Rate 2 of 10.3 percent (81/786). Acceptance Rate 1 can be viewed as an upward-biased measure of the 2014 acceptance rate, whereas Rate 2 is downward-biased, such that the “true” acceptance rate falls somewhere in between—roughly in the 12–13 percent range for 2014. The overall results for 2014 in Table 2, Panel A are largely similar to those for 2011–2013, consistent with the current editorial team's decision to generally retain policies from the preceding regime, together with a generally similar experience in the submission and review process in 2014 as in the previous five years.Table 2, Panel B presents a slightly different “annual cohort” perspective on acceptance rates. Whereas Panel A focuses on the annual flow of manuscripts and editorial decisions in a given year independent of when those manuscripts were initially submitted, Panel B treats each year's set of new submissions as a unique “cohort” and tracks the eventual outcomes for that cohort over the next several years. Thus, the first two lines of Table 2, Panel B shows that for the journal years ending May 31, 2009 and 2010, TAR received 557 and 502 new submissions, respectively (column (a)), all of which, as column (d) shows, were either accepted or rejected as of five years later on May 31, 2014, yielding acceptance rates of 17.4 percent and 13.7 percent, respectively, for these two cohorts of 2009 and 2010 submissions.The final three rows of Table 2, Panel B report the corresponding figures for the status of the 2011, 2012, and 2013 submission cohorts. The final two columns present lower and upper bounds on the annual acceptance rates for these three cohorts of new submissions based on different assumptions concerning how many of the manuscripts that remained in process as of 5/31/2014 will ultimately be accepted. The results show that the final acceptance rate for the 2011 cohort of new submissions will fall in the 14.3 percent to 16.3 percent range versus 15.3 percent to 18.8 percent and 5.2 percent to 19.5 percent for the 2012 and 2013 cohorts, respectively. The wider range for the 2013 cohort reflects the fact that a larger percentage of these manuscripts remained in process as of 5/31/2014.One final observation concerns the relation between TAR acceptance rates, publication rates, and the resulting backlog of accepted but not-yet-published manuscripts. Steve Kachelmeier's regime accepted a sufficient number of articles to build an approximately six-month backlog by the end of his term. Therefore, Stacy and I inherited an inventory of accepted articles to fill the three issues published in our first six months. Throughout the Harry/Stacy term this backlog grew to approximately ten months, which represents five issues. Based on the data in column (d) of Table 2, Panel A, TAR editors have accepted an average of 75.7 articles per year over the last six years. Given that TAR has published 72 articles per year over this period, an additional 3.7 articles per year have been added to the backlog, consistent with the general description above.Having a sufficient backlog ensures a consistent publication rate and a consistent number of articles per issue in contrast to some earlier years in which TAR published relatively “thin” issues comprised of fewer articles, where “thin” issues can hurt a journal's visibility. On the other hand, having too long of a backlog can result in published articles that are less timely, although the online publication process addresses this concern to some degree. In net, the current backlog seems at least sufficient, and my understanding is that Mark and Elizabeth plan to take action to reduce the backlog, a policy that I endorse.Exhibit 1 provides further details on the 786 editorial decisions reported in Table 2, Panel A for the journal year ending May 31, 2014. Exhibit 1 shows that 574 of the 786 decisions (73 percent) were first-round decisions, while 123 (16 percent) were second-round decisions (first revisions) and the remaining 89 (11 percent) were third-round or later. Of the 574 first-round decisions, Panel A of Exhibit 1 shows that rejection was the most common outcome, accounting for approximately 73 percent (227 + 192 = 419 of 574) of the first-round decisions, while the remaining 27 percent of first-round decisions were revisions if we exclude the 2012 Presidential Scholar Address.1 Panel A also shows that of the 419 first-round rejections, we attributed 227 (54 percent) to insufficient contribution, and the other 192 (46 percent) primarily to validity concerns.Next, Exhibit 1, Panel A shows that of the 154 first-round decisions in 2014 that permitted the authors to submit a revised manuscript, 74 were standard “revise and resubmit” decisions, while the other 80 were more qualified “uncertain” decisions. Both “revise and resubmit” and “uncertain” have outcome risk, but the degree of that risk is substantially higher for an “uncertain” decision. Specifically, an “uncertain” letter informs the author that neither the reviewers nor the editor can envision a viable revision path that would address the identified concerns, but that the editor recognizes that the author might be able to construct such a path. Accordingly, such a letter gives the author an option to revise and resubmit, but without explicitly encouraging the author to do so. The intent is to communicate clearly to the author that withdrawing the manuscript might be in the author's best interest if the author's candid assessment is that the concerns raised cannot feasibly be addressed. Experience indicates that almost all recipients of “uncertain” letters choose to revise and resubmit in spite of the cautions, but the rejection rate on “uncertain” revisions is substantially higher than that for standard invitations to revise and resubmit.Moving to the second-round or “first revision” decisions, Exhibit 1, Panel B shows that of the 123 total second-round outcomes, 12 received conditional acceptances and 68 received invitations for further revision, with seven of these in the more qualified “uncertain” category. The remaining 43 (13 + 30) second-round letters were rejections, which are always painful. Nevertheless, a third-round rejection is even worse. This consideration encourages editors to make difficult decisions on manuscripts that appear to have potential but achieved only limited progress in the first revision.By the time a manuscript gets to the third round or beyond, the odds of success increase dramatically. Exhibit 1, Panel C shows that for these manuscripts 68 of the 89 fiscal 2014 decisions were acceptance or conditional acceptance, a rate of 76 percent. Seventeen manuscripts received a further revise and resubmit during the third or later round, and four manuscripts were rejected at this advanced stage of the process. Although we seek to minimize such late-round rejections by making the tough decisions sooner whenever possible, in some cases further rounds appear to be the most appropriate decision despite the risk. Finally, we note that Panel C includes 70 third-round decisions, 18 fourth-round decisions, and one fifth-round decision. Of the 19 fourth- and fifth-round decisions, 18 were conditional acceptances.Panels A–D in Table 3 compare submissions to acceptances by subject area, research method, and the combination of the two. The results offer important insight concerning patterns and trends, including whether submissions in certain subject areas or using certain methods were more or less likely than others to be published in TAR over the fiscal years 2009–2014. These tables are helpful in responding to conjectures that TAR systematically favors or disfavors particular areas or methods of research, where the conjecture could stem simply from comparing the number of publications across topic areas or research methods. Table 3 provides systematic data by relating acceptance rates to corresponding submission rates. Table 3 counts each study only once, even though many studies go through several rounds of revision before eventually being published or rejected. This approach means that the figures in Table 3 will generally differ from those in Tables 1 and 2, which treat each submitted version of a study as a distinct manuscript.The general pattern in Table 3 indicates that The Accounting Review accepts articles at rates that are very similar to the corresponding submission rates, whether by topic, by method, or by topic crossed with method.2 The overall similarity in submission and acceptance rates is consistent with the journal's policy of not emphasizing one area or method over another, but rather seeking to reflect the broad interests of AAA members. In turn, this general similarity between submission and acceptance rates is consistent with our process of selecting editors and reviewers. By choosing reviewers for each submission who are experts in the area of that submission, we seek to subject each submission to a comparable review process.Authors obviously exhibit self-selection preferences in determining the journals to which they direct their submissions. These decisions by authors are one fundamental determinant of ultimate TAR publication rates. For example, although TAR publishes far fewer manuscripts in the accounting systems area or manuscripts employing field study methods as compared to the number of financial archival manuscripts, this difference in publication rates is driven primarily by differences in submission rates rather than by differences in acceptance rates. To see this, compare the two percentages in each cell of Table 3, Panel D. The first (second) percentage indicates that cell's percentage of all submissions (acceptances).In this way, Table 3, Panel D compares the percentage of all submissions and acceptances by area and method over the last six years, 2009–2014. For example, the two percentages in the cell in Table 3, Panel D for the combination of the financial accounting area and the archival research method are “43.5%” and “(37.5%),” indicating that over the last six years financial archival studies have comprised 43.5 percent of all TAR submissions and 37.5 percent of all TAR acceptances. The resulting [Acceptance Rate − Submission Rate] differential is −6.0 percent, which is the least favorable differential of any cell in Panel D. This pattern is consistent with the observation above that financial archival was the least-favored category by this measure over the 2009–2014 period.In contrast to the preceding example, the overall pattern of submission and acceptance rates in Table 3, Panel D shows a generally close correspondence between the submission and acceptance percentages. Other than the −6.0 percent difference noted above, none of the individual cells (as opposed to “Total” cells in the bottom row and the far right column) in Table 3, Panel D have [Acceptance Rate − Submission Rate] differentials with absolute values greater than 2.1 percent. The only other distinctive pattern in Table 3, Panel D is that managerial accounting studies have greater acceptance rates than submission rates across all four research method categories, resulting in the bottom “Total” row in Panel D showing that managerial studies for all research methods represent 12.6 percent of TAR submissions, but 17.0 percent of acceptances over the last six years. In my view, the rate differentials documented here are worth noting and tracking in the future. Differences between submission and acceptance rates of −6.0 percent for financial archival studies and +4.4 percent for all managerial accounting studies over a six-year period could potentially represent more than temporary random fluctuations.The preceding comparison of submissions and acceptances across areas is related to the general TAR policy of openness with respect to a variety of research areas and methods within accounting. One of the important signals that the TAR senior editor can send with respect to openness to research in particular areas or using particular methods is through the make-up of the team of TAR co-editors. For example, I continued the prior regime's approach of signaling TAR's openness to research in the accounting systems area and to studies using field-based methods by inviting Vern Richardson and Ken Merchant, respectively, to serve as TAR editors to handle submissions in accounting systems and field-based studies. Table 3, Panel A shows one acceptance in the systems area in 2014, and the same is true in Table 3, Panel B with one field and case study acceptance in 2014.More broadly, the process of recruiting an ideal team of TAR editors is an interesting challenge. The challenge comes from attempting to balance the desire to have an editorial team that has subject matter and method expertise across a wide range of areas and methods, while at the same time keeping the total number of editors manageable and balancing the workload equitably across editors. Almost all authors would prefer that one or more of the TAR co-editors have considerable expertise and enthusiasm for the author's research area and method, and further would prefer that one of these editors handle the author's submission. To increase our odds of achieving this matching, I recruited an additional co-editor to bring the total to 14 co-editors, while adjusting the mix of editors' expertise. Specifically, I adjusted the mix of editors slightly away from the experimental/behavioral area and toward the financial archival area because of the prior regime's experience of having to request that editors in the financial archival area handle more than the targeted maximum of 40 new manuscripts per year. Based on our three years of experience, I am confident that these were good decisions. Each of our co-editors has worked very hard during these three years, and we have generally been able to handle all submissions while respecting the agreed maximum workload of 40 new manuscripts (not including revisions) per co-editor per year, in addition to resubmissions. The primary exception has been in the empirical auditing area, where Mike Ettredge has generously handled an average of more than 40 new manuscripts annually over our three-year term.As a final observation, under our current regime, the senior editor effectively serves as the “residual claimant” for new manuscripts. This means that when we received more manuscripts than we had capacity to handle in a particular area in a given week, I generally served as editor on these excess manuscripts, which may or may not be within my area of expertise. In my view, this is a natural result of variation in the inflow of manuscripts, and reflects circumstances that our system can handle reasonably effectively. In such cases, the senior editor will almost always rely more heavily on the reviewers than (s)he might if the manuscript were in his or her primary area of expertise.In terms of the volume of decision letters, individual co-editors wrote between 17 and 56 decision letters in journal year 2013 (June 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013) and between 13 and 66 letters in journal year 2014. The increase reflects that in 2014, the third year of our term, individual co-editors wrote an increasing number of decision letters on resubmissions, as well as letters on new submissions, relative to our second year of 2013. The percentage of all letters that I wrote fell from approximately 23.3 percent in journal year 2013 to 19.0 percent in journal year 2014.Table 4, Panel A tallies the employer affiliations of all authors who have published in The Accounting Review, with separate columns for Volume 89 (calendar year 2014) and six-year cumulative totals for Volumes 84–89 (calendar years 2009–2014). As in prior annual reports, Panel A adjusts for co-authorship by attributing 1/k of an article to each of its k coauthors. If an author lists two affiliations, Panel A allocates half of that author's 1/k share to each. However, because Panel A does not adjust for faculty size, universities such as The University of Texas at Austin and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign with larger research-active faculties have an obvious advantage in the rankings.Panel A of Table 4 lists institutions in rank order based on the cumulative six-year column, as evidence of the extent of concentration/diversity among TAR authors. Both columns exclude invited commentaries from AAA Presidential Scholar Lectures, which we accept by policy, as well as six invited discussions from research forums, two in 2009, one in 2012, one in 2013, and two in 2014. I also note here that the TAR conflict-of-interest policy precludes a TAR co-editor or senior editor from serving as editor on a colleague's submission.3The 425 articles included in the six-year cumulative column of Table 4, Panel A reflect 225 different affiliations, with the cumulative article count by affiliation ranging from a high of 17.25 articles to a low of 1/6 of an article (a three-coauthored article with two affiliations for one of the coauthors). In terms of relative concentration/diversity of employment, the 225 different affiliations over six years are consistent with a relatively limited concentration in TAR over this period. The ten highest-ranked affiliations tallied in the Table 4, Panel A cumulative column account for 21.8 percent of the 425 total articles, which is well below the 25.3 percent top-ten statistic similarly computed for The Accounting Review by Swanson, Wolfe, and Zardkoohi (2007, 1262) in their analysis of concentration in articles published across four accounting journals and across ten non-accounting business journals from 1990–2002. Swanson et al. (2007, Table 2) reports that TAR and Contemporary Accounting Research are less concentrated than the other two accounting journals they consider, and that TAR is seventh in concentration when compared against ten prominent non-accounting business journals. Overall, these results are consistent with only a moderate level of affiliation concentration in TAR in recent years.Table 4, Panel B tallies the doctoral alma maters of TAR authors published in calendar year 2014 and cumulatively from 2010–2014, attributing 1/k of each article to each of its k coauthors, and excluding invited AAA Presidential Scholar Lectures and six invited forum discussions. Panel B lists programs in descending order of the cumulative five-year frequency of doctoral affiliations by school. The general conclusion that I take away from Table 4, Panels A and B is that TAR has been relatively diverse in terms of author affiliation and author Ph.D.-granting institution over the years 2010–2014.Table 4, Panel C reports data on international affiliations. Results for submissions and acceptances from authors with U.S. versus international affiliations remained relatively unchanged from fiscal 2013 to fiscal 2014. This is in contrast to the trend from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2013, which displayed an increasing percentage of submissions and acceptances from outside the U.S. For fiscal 2014, authors employed outside the U.S. account for about 34.2 percent of TAR's submissions, down slightly from 35.1 percent for fiscal 2013, and for 22.3 percent of acceptances versus about 25.8 percent for fiscal 2013.Table 4, Panel D drills deeper by documenting the fiscal 2014 non-U.S. submissions and acceptances by major geographical region. Of the submissions, Canada (5.3 percent of total fiscal 2014 unique submissions), Europe (10.9 percent), and Asia (13.7 percent) constitute the most frequent contributors. Among the acceptances, Canada experiences an acceptance percentage somewhat above their corresponding submission percentages, while for other regions the acceptance percentage is less than or equal to the submission percentage. In terms of international exposure for TAR, it is encouraging that international submissions and acceptances now account for approximately one-quarter to one-third of all TAR manuscripts.Table 5 reports processing time data for the 786 editorial decisions reached from June 1, 2013 through May 31, 2014, defining “processing time” as the number of days from the submission to the date when Stacy Hoffman sent the decision letter. Our mean and median processing times for 2014 are 94 days and 92 days, which is very consistent with the mean of 95 days and median of 91 days in 2013. An area of emphasis in 2014 was to reduce the “long tail” turnaround times in excess of 120 days. I discussed this issue with the AAA Publications Committee and with the co-editors who attended the TAR editors' meeting during the AAA Annual Meeting in August 2013. Stacy and I followed up with several communications to editors on how we might reduce the longest turnaround times. We at least made modest progress in this regard in 2014 by reversing the previous trend, which saw the percentage of turnaround times beyond 120 days increase from 17.1 percent in 2012 to 22.4 percent in 2013. In 2014, we reduced this percentage to 21.7 percent. Finally, I note that of the 38 manuscripts with the longest turnaround time, 21 were handled by three editors, which is consistent with a combination of complex topics and editors' personal circumstances serving as an important source of long turnaround times.First and foremost, Stacy Hoffman, TAR editorial assistant, has kept the railroad running on time with a unique combination of grace and precision. In the unlikely event that we could have done it without Stacy, it would have been a lot less fun! Second, I thank our outstanding Katz doctoral students, Michele Frank, Eric Chan, and Jordan Bable, for their excellent performance as TAR research assistants. They have faithfully identified potential reviewers who are knowledgeable yet objective, and have done so in a remarkably positive, upbeat manner. Third, I am very proud to be able to thank the 14 outstanding scholars who have so generously carried out their co-editor responsibilities for The Accounting Review over this final year of our three-year term—Mike Ettredge, Dave Guenther, Leslie Hodder, Amy Hutton, Bin Ke, Lisa Koonce, Charles Lee, Ken Merchant, Greg Miller, Don Moser, Mort Pincus, Vern Richardson, Phil Stocken, and Beverly Walther. I know from reading each of their letters that they have invested an extraordinary amount of time and effort to come to an informed and appropriate decision and to communicate their decision in a thoughtful, professional manner to all manuscript authors. My fourth thanks go to all TAR Editorial Board members, whose work largely determines the quality of TAR as a journal. In the same way, many thanks to the additional 472 ad hoc reviewers (named in Appendix A) who devoted many thousands of hours of expert analysis without financial compensation and completed one or more reviews for TAR during this past year.Fifth, I extend many thanks to Steve Kachelmeier and Mary Capps, editorial assistant in the previous regime, for their help in getting Stacy and me started. Similarly, I thank Mark DeFond and Elizabeth Garrett, the new editorial management team, who have been a pleasure to work with as we hand off operations to them. Sixth, I thank the American Accounting Association, particularly the many outstanding professionals on the AAA staff in Sarasota, as well as the generous academic volunteers who serve on the AAA Publications Committee and Board of Directors. I particularly thank AAA Executive Director Tracey Sutherland and our ad hoc “team” of AAA leaders for great support and guidance in dealing with issues related to the integrity of the academic research process during these last two years. Seventh, Stacy and I extend continuing thanks to our contacts at Allen Press, especially Elizabeth Garrett (incoming TAR editorial assistant) and Whitney Lohrenz in tech support and Managing Editor Jean Baldwin, for their patience and their prompt and helpful answers to our many questions. Eighth, I thank the University of Pittsburgh and the Katz Graduate School of Business, Dean John Delaney, Director of Administration Ron Magnuson, and IT Services ace Chris Tomei for their support to TAR, providing Stacy and me with the necessary physical and technology support we need. Ninth, I thank my accounting academic colleagues at universities around the world for this wonderful opportunity and responsibility of serving as TAR senior editor. Finally and most importantly, I thank my family for their support, particularly Karen, my dear wife of 44 years, for being the day-to-day glue and support that hold us all together.