Description
Prior literature on accounting journal rankings has provided different journal lists depending
on the type of examination (citations- vs. survey-based) and the choice of journals covered.
A recent study by Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young (2006) [Bonner, S.,
Hesford, A., Van der Stede, W. A., & Young, M. S. (2006). The most influential journals in
academic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31(7), 663–685] documents
disproportionately more citations in the financial accounting area, suggesting a financial
accounting bias in the accounting literature. We use citations from accounting dissertations
completed during 1999–2003 to provide a ranking of accounting journals. The database
allows us to assess the research interests of new accounting scholars and the
literature sources they draw from.a
Ranking accounting journals using dissertation citation
analysis: A research note
Kam C. Chan
a,
*
, Kam C. Chan
b,1
, Gim S. Seow
c,2
, Kinsun Tam
d,3
a
Department of Accounting, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY 10570, USA
b
Department of Finance, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA
c
Department of Accounting, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
d
Department of Accounting, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA
a b s t r a c t
Prior literature on accounting journal rankings has provided different journal lists depend-
ing on the type of examination (citations- vs. survey-based) and the choice of journals cov-
ered. A recent study by Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young (2006) [Bonner, S.,
Hesford, A., Van der Stede, W. A., & Young, M. S. (2006). The most in?uential journals in
academic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31(7), 663–685] documents
disproportionately more citations in the ?nancial accounting area, suggesting a ?nancial
accounting bias in the accounting literature. We use citations from accounting disserta-
tions completed during 1999–2003 to provide a ranking of accounting journals. The data-
base allows us to assess the research interests of new accounting scholars and the
literature sources they draw from. Another innovation is our ranking of accounting journals
based on specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, tax, systems, and other) and
research methods (archival, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). To mitigate the
?nancial accounting bias documented by Bonner et al. (2006), we derive a ranking metric
by scaling (normalizing) the journal citations by the number of dissertations within each
specialty area and research method. Overall, the top journals are, JAR, AOS, TAR, and JAE.
We also provide evidence that top journal rankings do vary by specialty area as well as
by research methods.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Publishing research in high-quality journals is an inte-
gral part of academic life. Therefore, researchers often refer
to journal rankings when making decisions to submit and
publish their research. Moreover, personnel decisions such
as tenure, promotion, hiring, and merit allocations also
correlate with the quality of research, which in turn, re-
lates to where the faculty members publish their research.
In addition, faculty members who teach research seminars
in accounting doctoral programs often refer to journal
rankings when setting their reading lists.
Studies of journal rankings in accounting research have
a long history. A recent study by Bonner et al. (2006) pro-
vides an up-to-date perspective on this subject. Bonner
et al. (2006) summarize all major studies as of 2004 and of-
fer several useful observations and analyses. First, they doc-
ument that The Accounting Review (TAR), Journal of
Accounting Research (JAR), Journal of Accounting and Econom-
ics (JAE), Accounting, Organizations, and Society (AOS) and
Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) are consistently
ranked as the top ?ve accounting journals over at least
the last two decades. Second, by examining the distribution
of published articles from1984 to 2003 with respect to var-
ious accounting areas, the authors ?nd that ?nancial
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2008.12.002
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 914 773 3912.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K.C. Chan), [email protected]
(K.C. Chan), [email protected] (G.S. Seow), [email protected]
(K. Tam).
1
Tel.: +1 270 745 2977.
2
Tel.: +1 860 486 3019.
3
Tel.: +1 518 442 4950.
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
accounting (managerial accounting) articles appear in dis-
proportionately larger (smaller) numbers in these ?ve jour-
nals except for AOS. Moreover, systems and tax articles
appear less frequently during the same 20-year period in
the ?ve journals while auditing articles appear rather
evenly in the ?ve journals except in JAE, which publishes
fewer auditing articles. Bonner et al. (2006) ?ndings sug-
gest that caution is in order when using journal rankings
to gauge research performance by accounting faculty be-
cause of differences in each journal’s ‘theme’, which may
most affect faculty who are in a specialty other than ?nan-
cial accounting. Hence, it may not be appropriate to use re-
sults from accounting ranking studies ‘‘as is” without
quali?cations. While Bonner et al. (2006) discussion is
insightful, they do not offer a ranking of accounting journals
that accounts for the ?nancial accounting bias.
The objective of this paper is to provide an alternative
accounting journal ranking by analyzing citations in
accounting doctoral dissertations. We provide a general
ranking as well as rankings by specialty areas and by re-
search methods. Our study extends the literature in several
aspects. First, our dissertation citation study represents a
new approach to the journal ranking literature. This ap-
proach follows the conventional wisdom that citations
are useful to gauge the quality of journals (Gar?eld,
1972). We argue that dissertations are major accomplish-
ments by new doctorate holders. Doctoral dissertations
are supervised by doctoral committees consisting of ex-
perts who may be from other departments and/or univer-
sities. Thus, dissertations represent signi?cant research
completed by new accounting scholars within a rigorous
environment. Citations in these dissertations are founda-
tions of new accounting scholars’ research. Therefore, cita-
tions in the accounting dissertations represent the
in?uence of accounting journals on the work of these
new scholars. Second, because of the dif?culties involved
in coding citation data, citation-based studies in the
accounting literature mainly use citations in a limited
number of journals selected by the respective authors,
thereby creating a potential bias towards the selected jour-
nals. For example, if a study counts citations only in TAR,
JAR, and JAE, it is not surprising that the counts will favor
these three journals. Our dissertation citation approach
mitigates this self-citation bias by not specifying a prede-
termined set of accounting journals in the sampling pro-
cess. Third, extending Bonner et al. (2006), we produce
accounting journal rankings for different specialty areas.
In addition, we also adjust for the dissertation specialty
areas to mitigate the ?nancial accounting bias. Last, we
also present journal rankings by research methods (archi-
val, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). Since re-
search methods cut across different specialty areas, they
provide further evidence that journal rankings can vary
by research methods as well.
Literature review
Bonner et al. (2006) provide a comprehensive literature
review in accounting journal ranking studies up to 2004.
Therefore, our literature review of journal ranking studies
primarily focuses on the literature that was not included
in Bonner et al. (2006) or that appeared during and after
2004.
Brown (2003) examines publication outlets of 223
heavily downloaded papers in the Social Science Research
Network (SSRN). He derives journal rankings from a subset
of these 223 papers that are subsequently published in
1999–2001. Brown (2003) reports that the top ?ve journals
are JAE, TAR, JAR, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial
Economics. To mitigate the ?nancial accounting bias, he
provides a separate ranking of ?nancial accounting vs.
non-?nancial accounting journals based on the authors’ re-
ported teaching/research interests in Hasselback’s
Accounting Faculty Directory. However, the resulting top
?ve ranked journals among his non-?nancial accounting
category are still primarily journals that published dispro-
portionately more ?nancial accounting articles. While
Brown’s approach is new and interesting, its use of SSRN
papers introduces a self-selection bias because whether
authors upload their papers to SSRN is a self-selection
behavior. Therefore, the approach does not effectively mit-
igate the ?nancial accounting bias, among other possible
biases.
Herron and Hall (2004) conducted a comprehensive e-
survey on the perceptions of journal rankings in account-
ing. They contacted 3806 tenure-track accounting faculty
listed in Hasselback’s 2003 Accounting Faculty Directory
and received a 16% response rate. Besides updating previ-
ous survey studies, Herron and Hall (2004) also asked
respondents if they could publish their research in a partic-
ular journal with a reasonable effort. In addition, Herron
and Hall (2004) recognized the phenomenon of under-rep-
resentation in several accounting specialties and they used
a weighting scheme to mitigate the raw response rates to
control for the disproportionately high-response rate from
?nancial accounting researchers. By eliminating the non-
accounting journals in their list, the top ?ve accounting
journals they derived were JAR, JAE, TAR, National Tax Jour-
nal (NTJ), and CAR. Also, Herron and Hall (2004) presented
journal rankings by specialty areas.
Reinstein and Calderon (2006) asked 295 department
chairs (273 US, 7 Canadian, and 15 non-North American)
in the American Accounting Association’s (AAA) Account-
ing Leadership Program on the use of accounting journal
lists for promotion, tenure, and performance evaluations.
Of the 145 respondents (49.2% response rate), only 19
(13%) reported having such journal ranking lists. Among
these 19, the top ?ve journals are TAR, JAR, JAE, CAR, and
Journal of the American Taxation Association (JATA).
Lowensohn and Samelson (2006) surveyed 2464 AAA
section members regarding journal rankings in various
specialty areas as well as their opinions on whether a jour-
nal is one of the top-three accounting journals. Using in-
puts from 517 respondents (21% usable response), they
identi?ed the top-?ve journals as TAR, AOS, JATA, Behavioral
Research in Accounting (BRIA), and JAR. As expected, their
results also indicated that AAA members have different
perceptions of top accounting journals with respect to var-
ious specialty areas.
Beattie and Goodacre (2006) ranked journals based on
the Research and Assessment Exercise (RAE) data in the
876 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
UK in 2001. The RAE is a peer-reviewed process that asks
all UK universities to report their faculty’s published re-
search over a 5-year period to respective business disci-
pline committees. The goal of this process is to assess the
research performance of each university. Beattie and Good-
acre (2006) use the accounting area data to derive journal
ranking. Their top ?ve accounting journals are JAR,
Accounting and Business Research (ABR), AOS, Journal of Busi-
ness Finance and Accounting (JBFA), and Accounting Histori-
ans Journal (AHJ).
Chan and Liano (2009) use a threshold citation ap-
proach to rank journals. They examine in?uential account-
ing journals, institutions and articles cited in AOS, CAR, JAE,
JAR, and TAR during 2000–2004 to rank journals. Unlike
other citation studies, Chan and Liano (2009) include only
articles that are cited at least ?ve times. The top ?ve
accounting journals in Chan and Liano (2009) are JAR,
JAE, TAR, AOS, and CAR. Chan and Liano (2009), however,
do not adjust for over-representation of citations in the
?nancial accounting area and do not offer journal rankings
in different specialty areas.
Table 1 presents a summary of this recent literature.
Both Herron and Hall (2004) and Reinstein and Calderon
(2006) have a tax journal replacing AOS in their top ?ve
lists; however, Herron and Hall (2004) suggest NTJ while
Reinstein and Calderon (2006) rank JATA as the top tax
journal in their top ?ve lists. Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006) report that BRIA and JATA replace JAE and CAR in
the top ?ve journal list. Herron and Hall (2004), and
Lowensohn and Samelson (2006) provide survey results
regarding journal rankings in the specialty areas. Chan
and Liano (2008) have the same top ?ve journals as in
the prior literature using a different citation analysis
but they do not offer journal rankings in different
accounting specialties. On the other hand, Beattie and
Goodacre (2006) use a totally different approach and
have a strictly UK-focus. The top ?ve accounting journals
in Beattie and Goodacre (2006) are different from the
prior literature.
With the exception of Brown (2003) and Chan and Liano
(2009), the recent literature is based on either surveys or
subjective peer-reviews. Our study complements these
studies by analyzing citations in recent accounting disser-
tations. We offer a general ranking as well as by specialty
area and research method. Citations obtained in our study
originate from an extensive set of accounting journals, and
we classify dissertations into different research areas
based on their content.
Data
We use citations in recent accounting dissertations to
develop accounting journal rankings. These dissertations
are obtained from ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses dat-
abases provided by UMI. ProQuest classi?es dissertations
by subject area. This study uses only dissertations classi-
?ed by ProQuest as accounting. To make data collection
manageable and allow time for dissertation authors to
publish their work derived from dissertations, we include
all accounting dissertations from January 1999 through
December 2003. Dissertations dated within this period
are freely downloadable. Dissertations completed after
2003 are expensive to download.
4
At the time of our data
collection, there were 437 dissertations in accounting within
our sampling period. This initial sample is further ?ltered
with the following selection criteria to arrive at a ?nal sam-
ple of 247 dissertations:
Table 1
Recent journal ranking studies in accounting.
Study Data/research method Major ?ndings
Chan and
Liano
(2008)
Use citations in AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR during 2000–2004 to rank
journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are JAR, JAE, TAR, AOS, and CAR
Include only cited articles that have at least ?ve citations Also ranked accounting programs and in?uential articles
Herron and
Hall (2004)
Survey tenure-track faculty regarding their perceptions of journal
ranking and publishing feasibility
The top ?ve accounting journals are JAR, JAE, TAR, NTJ (National Tax
Journal), and CAR
a
Use a weighting scheme to adjust the survey results and hence, they
compensate under-represented group of survey respondents
Also reported top journals in various accounting areas
Reinstein and
Calderon
(2006)
Conduct investigations at accounting department levels to ascertain
the journal ranking departments actually used in promotion, tenure,
and performance evaluations
Only 13% (19 out of 145 departments) of the accounting
departments have a list of accounting journals
The top 5 journals: TAR, JAR, JAE, CAR, and JATA (Journal of
American Taxation Association)
Beattie and
Goodacre
(2006)
Use UK universities’ Research and Assessment Exercise (RAE)
submitted data on accounting journal publications in 2001 to rank
journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are: JAR, ABR (Accounting and
Business Research), AOS, JBFA (Journal of Business Finance and
Accounting), and AHJ (Accounting Historians Journal)
Include non-accounting journals
Lowensohn
and
Samelson
(2006)
Conduct survey using AAA section membership to identify top
academic journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are: TAR, AOS, JATA, BRIA, and JAR
Also examine top journals in behavioral, tax, managerial,
government and non-pro?t, and systems specialty areas
Brown (2003) Use the number and percent frequency of articles a journal publishes
that are heavily downloaded from the Social Science Research
Network (SSRN) as the ranking criteria
The top ?ve journals are JAE, JAR, Journal of Finance, TAR, and the
Journal of Financial Economics
Include ?nance journals
a
Finance, management, and MIS journals are also ranked. We only list the accounting journals.
4
The cost is $37 per dissertation.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 877
Full text (not only the abstract) must be available for
each dissertation because this study needs to process
the reference list;
We include only Ph.D. or DBA level dissertations; and
The author must appear in Hasselback’s Accounting Fac-
ulty Directory 2004–2005 or 2006–2007.
5
The ?nal sample of 247 dissertations represents 84 US
universities (64 public and 20 private), and 6 foreign uni-
versities that contribute 11 dissertations to the sample of
247.
We use a software utility to electronically convert the
reference sections of these dissertations from the portable
document format (pdf) into text ?les. Conversion errors are
manually checked and corrected. To compile data for this
study, we write a computer program to read these text
?les. Each referenced article is represented as a record con-
sisting of the ?rst author’s last name, publication year,
starting page number and the journal name. The computer
program maintains a list of 122 journals covered in prior
accounting journal ranking studies as summarized in Bon-
ner et al. (2006) (i.e., Nobes, 1986; Hull & Wright, 1990;
Schroeder, Payne, & Harris, 1988; Hall and Ross, 1991;
Brown & Huefner, 1994; Smith, 1994; Jolly, Schroeder, &
Spear, 1995; Brinn, Jones, & Pendleburg, 1996; Ballas &
Theoharakis, 2003). The program determines if the journal
name of each record can be successfully matched to a jour-
nal on this list. The 247 dissertations generate 6386 suc-
cessfully matched accounting journal citations.
Next, we classify the dissertations by specialty areas
and dissertation research methods. The specialty areas
are auditing, ?nancial, managerial, systems and tax.
6
Dis-
sertations not in the above ?ve specialty areas are classi?ed
as ‘other’. The research methods are archival, experimental,
modeling, and survey/?eld.
7
Again, there are a few disserta-
tions with unique research methods that we classify as
‘other’.
8
Two of the coauthors did the classi?cations. For
the majority of the sample, the classi?cation was clear. For
seven dissertations where the two coauthors disagreed on
the classi?cation, a third coauthor offered his judgment to
resolve those cases.
To compare across different universities, we identify
top 20 universities from the Financial Times’ 2003 re-
search-based list of top 30 global business schools.
9
We
compare dissertations granted by the top 20 universities
with accounting doctoral programs vs. other universities as
well as published vs. unpublished dissertations. We conduct
author search on major research databases during a ?ve-
year period after the dissertation date. If an author publishes
an article consistent with the dissertation topic, we consider
the dissertation as published. To assess the sensitivity of our
results, we provide separate journal rankings based on (1)
dissertations from top-ranking/other universities, and (2)
published/unpublished dissertations.
Results
Descriptive frequency
We present the frequency by specialty areas and re-
search methods in Table 2, Panel A. Financial accounting
accounts for the largest number of dissertations (136 of
247), followed by managerial accounting, a distant second
with 37 dissertations. There are 28, 18, and 9 auditing, tax,
and systems dissertations, respectively. With respect to re-
search method, there are 150 archival dissertations fol-
lowed by 64 experimental dissertations.
We present a cross tab of citations by specialty areas
and research methods in Table 2, Panel B. As expected,
?nancial accounting dissertations that primarily use archi-
val research approach generate 3564 citations of the total
of 3822 citations by that area. Auditing and managerial
dissertations that primarily use experimental or survey
methods produce 901 and 838 citations, respectively.
To gain insight into how published dissertations and
top-institution dissertations may affect our ?ndings, we
present a breakdown of the number of dissertations and
citations by publication outcome and institution level in
Table 2, Panel C. Out of 244 dissertations, 88 (36.1%) are
published.
10
Top 20 programs account for 61 (25.0%) of all
dissertations. Among the top 20 program, there are 41%
(25/61) of the dissertations published. For the non-top pro-
grams, there are 34% (63/183) of the dissertations published.
Published dissertations contribute 36.9% (2304 out of 6248)
of citations and dissertations from top 20 programs contrib-
ute 22.6% (1409 out of 6248). We conduct v
2
tests on the
number of dissertations and citations to study the relation-
ship between publication outcome and institution level.
We cannot reject the null hypotheses of independence. Thus,
whether a dissertation is published or not is not associated
with level of the degree-granting institution.
We also examine whether the type of institution (public
vs. private) can affect publication outcome. The results are
in Table 2, Panel D. There are a total of 49 dissertations
from private institutions and 16 (33%) of these published.
On the other hand, there are 195 dissertations from public
institutions and 72 (36%) of these published. The difference
is not statistically signi?cant.
Journal rankings weighted by dissertation research method
Our data consists of 6386 matched accounting citations
from 247 dissertations. Because we con?ne our citation to
5
In a private email correspondence with Professor James R. Hasselback,
author of the Hasselback Accounting Faculty Director, he informed us that
once an accounting doctorate holder enters the directory the individual’s
record remains in the directory permanently, and that all future events
pertaining to that individual (e.g. leaving academia, retirement, death) are
periodically updated in the Alphabetical by Individual section.
6
We classify dissertation areas such as international or non-pro?t into
one of the ?ve major areas.
7
Unlike an experiment, a dissertation that uses the survey or ?eld study
method collects data through mail, emails or interviews.
8
For example, three dissertations in the ‘Other’ category are written in
French (Canadian), although their bibliographies are in English.
9
The Financial Times’ ranking includes schools without doctoral pro-
grams as well as those that did not grant accounting doctoral degrees
during our sample period.
10
We exclude three dissertations in French because we do not know if
they were published. This reduces the number of dissertations to 244 and
the number of citations to 6248.
878 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
accounting journals, we have, on average, approximately
26 accounting journal citations per dissertation. If we in-
clude all citations from all journals, there are approxi-
mately 82 citations per dissertation.
Table 3 presents the results of journal ranking by disser-
tation research method (archival, experimental, modeling,
survey, and other). We present the percentage share of
citations with respect to each research method in the last
row. The archival method dominates with 63.1% of cita-
tions. Experimental, modeling and survey methods have
25.2%, 1.8%, and 7.8% of total citations, respectively.
To control for the disproportionately large number of
archival-based dissertations, we present total citations
and citations per dissertation with respect to each research
method in Table 3. Essentially, citations per dissertation
are total citations to each journal in each research method
divided by the number of dissertations in the same re-
search method. By using the total citations per disserta-
tion, we are able to mitigate the effects of uneven
distribution of dissertations across various research meth-
ods. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for overrepresen-
tation of archival dissertations, and measures the impact of
individual journals within each research method. Sum-
ming the total citations per dissertation metrics across all
research methods (including the ‘‘other” category) creates
the weighted total citations per dissertation. That is, we
sum columns (4), (6), (8), (10), and (12) across different
journals. Hence, the weighted total citations per disserta-
tion are the weighted average of citations per dissertation
weighted by the total number of dissertations in each re-
search method. We then use the weighted total citations
per dissertation as the journal ranking metric. According
to the last column in Table 3, the overall top-?ve account-
ing journals based on this metric are TAR, JAR, AOS, JAE, and
BRIA (Behavioral Research in Accounting). It is clear that dif-
ferent journals have different impact on dissertation re-
search methods. For instance, AOS does well among
survey and experimental authors while JAE is the top-cited
journal among archival dissertations.
Journal rankings weighted by dissertation specialty area
Table 4 presents journal rankings by research spe-
cialty area. We decompose the total citations into the
?ve specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, sys-
tems, and tax) plus an ‘‘other” area. The last row shows
the percentage share of citations in each specialty. The
?nancial dissertation category accounts for 59.8% of total
citations.
We present total citations per dissertation in each spe-
cialty area in Table 4, Columns (4), (6), (8), (10), (12), and
(14). The total number of citations per dissertation ap-
proach is similar to that of Table 3 with the exception that
we use the number of dissertations in each specialty area
instead of research method in the weighting process. ‘‘Cita-
tions per dissertation” in Table 4 measures the impact of
Table 2
Citation/dissertation count by year, specialty area, research method, and publication outcome.
Research method Specialty area
Auditing Financial Managerial Systems Tax Other Total
Panel A: Number of dissertations by specialty area and research method
Archival 3 126 6 1 11 3 150
Experimental 22 6 19 4 5 8 64
Modeling 2 4 2 2 10
Survey 1 10 2 2 5 20
Other 3 3
Total 28 136 37 9 18 19 247
Panel B: Number of citations by specialty area and research method
Archival 140 3564 129 4 145 50 4032
Experimental 721 189 368 84 78 167 1607
Modeling 14 69 24 7 114
Survey 26 0 317 27 28 97 495
Other 138 138
Total 901 3822 838 122 251 452 6386
Level of institution Publication outcome
Unpublished dissertations Published dissertations Total
Panel C: Number of dissertations/Number of citations by level of doctoral-granting institution and publication outcome
Top 20 institutions 36/870 25/539 61/1409
Other institutions 120/3074 63/1765 183/4839
Total 156/3944 88/2304 244
*
/6248
Panel D: Number of dissertations/Number of citations by funding of doctoral-granting institution and publication outcome
Private institutions 33/941 16/399 49/1340
Public institutions 123/3003 72/1905 195/4908
Total 156/3944 88/2304 244
*
/6248
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of dissertations) = 0.85 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of citations) = 1.48 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of dissertations) = 0.31 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of citations) = 36.94 (p < 0.01).
*
Three dissertations in French were excluded because we could not determine if they were published.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 879
respective journals in each specialty area. The top-?ve
journals in Table 4 are TAR, JAR, AOS, JAE, and Auditing.
Comparison of ranking results by research method and
specialty area
There are similarities and differences in the results pre-
sented in Tables 3 and 4. To facilitate the comparison, we
present the top 10 journals using both approaches in Table
5. Two results emerge. First, after mitigating the ?nancial
accounting and archival method over-representation, we
conclude that the top four journals are TAR, JAR, AOS, and
JAE. The ?ndings are robust to weighing by research meth-
ods and specialty areas. Second, while CAR is traditionally
rankedinthetop?ve, our results showthat Auditingreplaces
CAR as one of the top-?ve journals when we weight by spe-
cialtyarea. If weweight byresearchmethod, BRIAmakes it to
the top ?ve. Our new top-?ve journal ranking suggests that
the journal rankings in the existing literature may be the re-
sult of ?nancial accounting and archival method bias.
Table 3
Citations by journal and research method.
Journal Archival (150
dissertations)
Experimental (64
dissertations)
Modeling (10
dissertations)
Survey (20
dissertations)
Other (3
dissertations)
Total
(2)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (4)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (6)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (8)
Cites Cites per Diss.
(10)
Cites Cites per Diss.
(12)
Wtd.
total
TAR 1263 798 5.32 333 5.20 22 2.20 86 4.30 24 8.00 25.02
JAR 1281 912 6.08 275 4.30 35 3.50 41 2.05 18 6.00 21.93
AOS 360 60 0.40 166 2.59 1 0.10 91 4.55 42 14.00 21.64
JAE 1030 935 6.23 53 0.83 18 1.80 9 0.45 15 5.00 14.31
BRIA 87 2 0.01 51 0.80 0.00 25 1.25 9 3.00 5.06
JMAR 91 10 0.07 44 0.69 0.00 31 1.55 6 2.00 4.30
CAR 271 202 1.35 48 0.75 17 1.70 3 0.15 1 0.33 4.28
AUDIT 216 35 0.23 167 2.61 5 0.50 9 0.45 0.00 3.79
AH 273 196 1.31 64 1.00 0.00 12 0.60 1 0.33 3.24
MA 74 21 0.14 19 0.30 0.00 32 1.60 2 0.67 2.70
JAL 98 42 0.28 41 0.64 1 0.10 11 0.55 3 1.00 2.57
MAR 24 0.00 4 0.06 1 0.10 14 0.70 5 1.67 2.53
ABR 79 48 0.32 23 0.36 0.00 4 0.20 4 1.33 2.21
IAE 73 3 0.02 50 0.78 0.00 20 1.00 0.00 1.80
JBFA 133 116 0.77 14 0.22 1 0.10 0.00 2 0.67 1.76
JA 106 63 0.42 36 0.56 0.00 6 0.30 1 0.33 1.62
JCM 35 3 0.02 9 0.14 0.00 22 1.10 1 0.33 1.59
JAAF 139 124 0.83 12 0.19 3 0.30 0.00 0.00 1.31
CPAJ 54 23 0.15 21 0.33 2 0.20 8 0.40 0.00 1.08
RAS 64 55 0.37 3 0.05 6 0.60 0.00 0.00 1.01
NTJ 69 50 0.33 10 0.16 0.00 9 0.45 0.00 0.94
JATA 78 52 0.35 22 0.34 0.00 4 0.20 0.00 0.89
JAED 32 0.00 24 0.38 0.00 8 0.40 0.00 0.78
IA 23 5 0.03 6 0.09 0.00 12 0.60 0.00 0.73
AF 25 15 0.10 5 0.08 0.00 4 0.20 1 0.33 0.71
JIS 33 3 0.02 26 0.41 1 0.10 3 0.15 0.00 0.68
JAPP 70 67 0.45 1 0.02 1 0.10 1 0.05 0.00 0.61
AAAJ 21 11 0.07 9 0.14 0.00 0.00 1 0.33 0.55
BAR 7 2 0.01 0.00 0.00 4 0.20 1 0.33 0.55
AA 23 6 0.04 15 0.23 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.37
CAM 2 1 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0.33 0.34
AY 31 26 0.17 3 0.05 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.32
AT 9 0.00 6 0.09 0.00 3 0.15 0.00 0.24
JIFMA 26 23 0.15 2 0.03 0.00 1 0.05 0.00 0.23
RAE 10 0.00 8 0.13 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.23
WCPA 7 2 0.01 1 0.02 0.00 4 0.20 0.00 0.23
CPOA 15 8 0.05 6 0.09 0.00 1 0.00 0.20
All other
journals
154 113 30 0 11 0
Total
citations
6386 4032 1607 114 495 138
% Share 63.1% 25.2% 1.8% 7.8% 2.2%
Table 3 presents journal rankings by dissertation research method (archival, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). The total number of citations is in
column (2). We present the percentage shares of the citations corresponding to each research methods in the bottom row of this table. The archival method
dominates with 63.1% of citations. Experimental, modeling, and survey methods have 25.2%, 1.8%, and 7.8% of total citations, respectively. To control for the
disproportionately large number of archival-based dissertations, we present total citations per dissertation by research method. Essentially, we divide the
total citations to each journal in each research method by the number of dissertations in the same research method. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for
overrepresentation of archival dissertations, and measures the impact of individual journals within each research method. Summing the total citations per
dissertation measures across all research methods creates the weighted total citations per dissertation (sum of columns (4), (6), (8), (10), and (12)). Hence,
the weighted total citations per dissertation are the weighted average of citations per dissertation weighted by the total number of dissertations in each
research method. We then use the weighted total citations per dissertation in the last column as the journal ranking metric.
880 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Table 4
Citations by journal and specialty area.
Journal Auditing (28
dissertations)
Financial (136
dissertations)
Managerial (37
dissertations)
Systems (9
dissertations)
Tax (18
dissertations)
Other (19
dissertations)
Total
(2)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (4)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (6)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (8)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (10)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (12)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (14)
Wtd
total
TAR 1263 190 6.79 769 5.65 201 5.43 21 2.33 37 2.06 45 2.37 24.63
JAR 1281 185 6.61 915 6.73 114 3.08 15 1.67 29 1.61 23 1.21 20.90
AOS 360 72 2.57 46 0.34 161 4.35 4 0.44 6 0.33 71 3.74 11.78
JAE 1030 33 1.18 905 6.65 57 1.54 0.00 19 1.06 16 0.84 11.27
AUDIT 216 168 6.00 21 0.15 3 0.08 8 0.89 6 0.33 10 0.53 7.98
AH 273 38 1.36 195 1.43 21 0.57 1 0.11 6 0.33 12 0.63 4.43
BRIA 87 26 0.93 3 0.02 22 0.59 11 1.22 2 0.11 23 1.21 4.09
CAR 271 47 1.68 203 1.49 11 0.30 0.00 2 0.11 8 0.42 4.00
IAE 73 2 0.07 4 0.03 8 0.22 1 0.11 0.00 58 3.05 3.48
JATA 78 2 0.07 16 0.12 2 0.05 0.00 58 3.22 0.00 3.47
NTJ 69 0.00 11 0.08 0 0.00 0.00 53 2.94 5 0.26 3.29
JA 106 16 0.57 56 0.41 2 0.05 4 0.44 4 0.22 24 1.26 2.97
JIS 33 1 0.04 3 0.02 6 0.16 23 2.56 0.00 0.00 2.78
JMAR 91 0.00 1 0.01 83 2.24 1 0.11 0.00 6 0.32 2.68
MA 74 3 0.11 20 0.15 26 0.70 4 0.44 0.00 21 1.11 2.51
JAL 98 18 0.64 43 0.32 23 0.62 0.00 10 0.56 4 0.21 2.35
CPAJ 54 14 0.5 19 0.14 0.00 4 0.44 0.00 17 0.89 1.98
JCM 35 0.00 2 0.01 20 0.54 12 1.33 0.00 1 0.05 1.94
JAED 32 0.00 2 0.01 1 0.03 0.00 0.00 29 1.53 1.57
JBFA 133 10 0.36 116 0.85 2 0.05 0.00 3 0.17 2 0.11 1.54
JAAF 139 11 0.39 122 0.9 3 0.08 0.00 2 0.11 1 0.05 1.53
MAR 24 0.00 1 0.01 10 0.27 8 0.89 0.00 5 0.26 1.43
ABR 79 7 0.25 56 0.41 10 0.27 1 0.11 0.00 5 0.26 1.31
JAPP 70 9 0.32 43 0.32 16 0.43 1 0.11 0.00 1 0.05 1.23
IA 23 18 0.64 0.00 5 0.14 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.78
AF 25 5 0.18 9 0.07 5 0.14 0.00 2 0.11 4 0.21 0.7
AA 23 10 0.36 9 0.07 1 0.03 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.61
RAS 64 3 0.11 58 0.43 3 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.61
AAAJ 21 2 0.07 11 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0.42 0.57
CPOA 15 1 0.04 5 0.04 0.00 0.00 0.00 9 0.47 0.55
AY 31 3 0.11 25 0.18 0.00 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.45
RAE 10 0.00 2 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0.42 0.44
OCPA 15 0.00 8 0.06 0.00 0.00 0.00 7 0.37 0.43
AB 20 1 0.04 16 0.12 3 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.23
NPA 12 0.00 9 0.07 0.00 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.23
JIFMA 26 0.00 25 0.18 1 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.21
EAR 10 1 0.04 9 0.07 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.1
IJA 14 0.00 14 0.1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.1
All other journals 108 5 50 18 3 9 23
Total citations 6386 901 3822 838 122 251 452
% share 14.1% 59.8% 13.1% 1.9% 3.9% 7.1%
Table 4 presents journal rankings by dissertation specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, systems, tax, and other). The total number of citations is in
column (2). We present the percentage shares of the citations corresponding to each specialty area in the bottomrowof this table. The ?nancial dissertations
have 59.8%of all citations while auditingis adistant secondwith12.1%. Tocontrol for thedisproportionatelylarge number of ?nancial dissertations, we present
total citations per dissertation by each specialty area. Essentially, we divide the total citations to each journal in each specialty area by the number of
dissertations in the same specialty area. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for overrepresentation of ?nancial dissertations, and measures the impact of
individual journals within each specialty area. Summing the total citations per dissertation measures across all specialty areas creates the weighted total
citations per dissertation (sum of columns (4), (6), (8), (10), (12) and (14)). Hence, the weighted total citations per dissertation are the weighted average of
citations per dissertation weighted by the total number of dissertations in each specialty area. We then use the weighted total citations per dissertation in the
last column as the journal ranking metric.
Table 5
Overall journal ranking by citations weighted by research method and specialty area.
Rank Weighted by research method Weighted by specialty area
1 The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
2 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research
3 Accounting Organizations and Society Accounting, Organizations and Society
4 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Accounting and Economics
5 Behavioral Research in Accounting Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
6 Journal of Management Accounting Research Accounting Horizons
7 Contemporary Accounting Research Behavioral Research in Accounting
8 Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory Contemporary Accounting Research
9 Accounting Horizons Issues in Accounting Education
10 Management Accounting Journal of the American Taxation Association
Table 5 presents the top 10 journals based on research method (Table 3) and specialty area (Table 4) weighting.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 881
Rankings by research method and specialty area
Table 6 presents journal rankings according to different
research methods. Table 6 is based on Table 3 along the
four major dissertation research methods. Both JAR and
TAR appear as top-?ve journals in every research method.
JAE and CAR also show up on the top-?ve journal list for
both archival and modeling dissertations. AOS is the top
journal among survey dissertations and it is ranked fourth
among experimental dissertations. Several other journals
appear as a top-?ve journal in each of the research
methods.
Table 6
Journal rankings by research method.
Rank Archival Experimental Modeling Survey
1 Journal of Accounting and
Economics
The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research Accounting Organizations and Society
2 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
3 The Accounting Review Auditing: A Journal of Practice and
Theory
Journal of Accounting and
Economics
Journal of Accounting Research
4 Contemporary Accounting
Research
Accounting Organizations and
Society
Contemporary Accounting
Research
Management Accounting
5 Accounting Horizons Accounting Horizons Review of Accounting Studies Journal of Management Accounting
Research
Table 6 presents the top-?ve accounting journals based on archival, experimental, modeling and survey research method.
Table 7
Journal rankings by citations from each specialty area.
Rank Present study Herron and Hall (2004) Lowensohn and Samelson (2006)
Panel A: Auditing
1 The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research NA
2 Journal of Accounting Research The Accounting Review NA
3 Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory Contemporary Accounting Research NA
4 Accounting, Organizations and Society Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory NA
5 Contemporary Accounting Research Accounting, Organizations and Society NA
Panel B: Financial
1 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research NA
2 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Accounting and Economics NA
3 The Accounting Review The Accounting Review NA
4 Contemporary Accounting Research Contemporary Accounting Research NA
5 Accounting Horizons Review of Accounting Studies NA
Panel C: Managerial
1 The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Management Accounting Research
2 Accounting, Organizations and Society The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
3 Journal of Accounting Research Accounting, Organizations and Society Accounting, Organizations and Society
4 Journal of Management Accounting
Research
Contemporary Accounting Research (tied for 4
th
) Journal of Accounting Research
5 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Management Accounting Research (tied for
4
th
)
Journal of Accounting and Economics
Panel D: Systems
1 Journal of Information Systems Management Science Journal of Information Systems
2 The Accounting Review Administrative Science Quarterly MIS Quarterly
3 Journal of Accounting Research Information Systems Research International Journal of Accounting Information
Systems
4 Journal of Cost Management MIS Quarterly Information Systems Research
5 Behavioral Research In Accounting Accounting Organizations and Society NA
Panel E: Tax
1 Journal of The American Taxation
Association
The Accounting Review Journal of The American Taxation Association
2 National Tax Journal Journal of Accounting and Economics National Tax Journal
3 The Accounting Review National Tax Journal Advances in Taxation
4 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of the American Taxation Association The Accounting Review
5 Journal of Accounting and Economics Contemporary Accounting Research Journal of Accounting and Economics
Based on Table 4, we present the top-?ve journal rankings in each of the ?ve specialty areas here. We also include the top-?ve journals in the surveys by
Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson (2006), where available, for comparison. To facilitate comparison, we remove non-accounting
journals from Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson (2006). Except for the systems specialty, we move accounting journals up accordingly.
882 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Based on Table 4, we present the top-?ve journal
rankings in each of the ?ve specialty areas in Table 7.
We also include the top-?ve journals in the surveys by
Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006), where available, for comparison. To facilitate
comparison, we eliminate non-accounting journals from
Herron and Hall (2004), and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006).
11
For the auditing specialty in Table 7, Panel A,
our ?ndings are the same as Herron and Hall (2004).
Auditing replaces JAE as a top-?ve accounting journal and
the remaining four journals are unchanged. For the ?nan-
cial specialty, both our study and Herron and Hall (2004)
report the same top-four journals. Our study places AH as
the ?fth-ranked journal and Herron and Hall (2004) rank
RAS as the ?fth-ranked journal. Consistent with Bonner
et al.’s (2006) ?ndings, AOS is not in the top-?ve in the
?nancial specialty area.
For the managerial specialty in Table 7, Panel C, all three
studies offer similar ?ndings. First, AOS is consistently
ranked in the top-three, second in our study, and third in
both Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006). Second, JMAR emerges as a top-?ve journal in all
three studies. For the systems specialty shown in Panel
D, there are differences among the three studies. Our ?nd-
ings suggest that Journal of Information Systems, TAR, JAR,
Journal of Cost Management, and BRIA are the top-?ve jour-
nals. Both Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and
Samelson (2006) have different ?ndings. The results for
the tax specialty ranking are in Panel E. Our results are con-
sistent with the other two studies. Both JATA and NTJ are in
the top-?ve and AOS is not in the top-?ve in any of the
three studies.
The results in Table 7 suggest that different journal
rankings apply to different specialty areas. Our specialty-
speci?c journal rankings in auditing, ?nancial, managerial,
and tax are similar to the recent survey studies. The tradi-
tional top-?ve journals (TAR, JAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR) as pre-
sented in the literature may or may not apply to the
different specialties. This is especially clear for the mana-
gerial, tax and systems specialty areas.
Journal rankings by publication outcome and level of
institution
Finally, we reexamine the journal rankings using publi-
cation outcome and accounting program levels. There are
six categories: Dissertations from top 20 programs vs. dis-
sertations from other institutions; published dissertations
Table 8
Journal rankings by publication outcome and level of institution.
Top ?ve journals weighted by research method Top ?ve journals weighted by specialty area
Dissertations from Top 20 programs (N=61) 1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Journal of Management Accounting Research
5. Contemporary Accounting Research
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting Horizons
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Dissertations from other institutions (N=183) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting, Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Auditing A Journal of Practice and Theory
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Published dissertations (N=88) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting, Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Management Accounting
1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Contemporary Accounting Research
5. Accounting, Organizations and Society
Unpublished dissertations (N=156) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Management Accounting
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Dissertations from private institutions (N=49) 1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Management Accounting
5. Contemporary Accounting Research
1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Accounting, Organizations, and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Issues in Accounting Education
Dissertations from public institutions (N=195) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
We report the top ?ve accounting journals weighted by research method and specialty area using Top 20 vs. other programs, published vs. unpublished, and
private vs. public institutions.
11
For the systems specialty, we do not make such an adjustment because
very few accounting journals will remain.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 883
vs. unpublished dissertations; and dissertations from pri-
vate institutions vs. dissertations from public institutions.
To control for the disproportionate number of archival
and ?nancial accounting dissertations, we use the same
weighting scheme as in Tables 3 and 4. For the sake of
brevity, we only present the top ?ve journals in each cate-
gory in Table 8. Except for a few small variations, the top-
four journals (TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE) are very consistent.
Results in Table 8 support our overall dissertation citations
analyses.
12
Summary
We conduct a citation-based journal ranking study in
accounting using dissertations completed during the
1999–2003 period. Besides preserving the merit of using
citations to gauge journal quality, this approach enables
us to mitigate the self-citation bias driven by a dispropor-
tionate large number of ?nancial and archival accounting
dissertations. That said, since our sample consists of
mainly accounting dissertations from US universities, our
results should be interpreted with that caveat in mind,
however.
Two major ?ndings emerge. First, our overall top-four
journals based on the weighted citations per dissertation
are TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE. The ?fth-ranked journal is BRIA
(based on research method weighting) or Auditing (based
on research specialty weighting). AOS ranks above JAE
while BRIA/Auditing displaces CAR as a top-?ve journal.
Our ranking of accounting journals based on dissertation
citations according to research method and specialty area
augments recent studies in the literature based on surveys.
Interestingly, there is no perfect matching between the
overall top-?ve journals in the literature (i.e., TAR, JAR,
JAE, AOS, and CAR) and the top-?ve journals in any of the
?ve specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, sys-
tems and tax). Speci?cally, Auditing is a top-?ve journal
in auditing. AOS and JMAR are top-?ve journals in manage-
rial. In the tax specialty, JATA and NTJ are among the top-
?ve journals.
Our study thus further substantiates the caution in Bon-
ner et al. (2006) about using journal rankings wisely within
our accounting discipline.
Acknowledgements
Helpful comments and suggestions from Professor An-
thony Hopwood (the Editor) and two anonymous review-
ers are gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge
Professor James R. Hasselback for his prompt clari?cation
on the Hasselback Accounting Faculty Directory. We are
responsible for any remaining errors.
Appendix. Abbreviated names for accounting journals
Abbreviated
journal name
Full name
AB Abacus
AY Accountancy
ABR Accounting and Business Research
AF Accounting and Finance
AAAJ Accounting Auditing and
Accountability Journal
AH Accounting Horizons
AOS Accounting Organizations and Society
TAR The Accounting Review
AA Advances in Accounting
AT Advances in Taxation
AUDIT Auditing: A Journal of Practice and
Theory
BRIA Behavioral Research in Accounting
BAR British Accounting Review
CAM CA Magazine
CAR Contemporary Accounting Research
CPAJ CPA Journal
CPOA Critical Perspectives On Accounting
EAR European Accounting Review
IA Internal Auditor
IJA International Journal of Accounting
IAE Issues in Accounting Education
JA Journal of Accountancy
JAE Journal of Accounting and Economics
JAPP Journal of Accounting and Public Policy
JAAF Journal of Accounting Auditing and
Finance
JAED Journal of Accounting Education
JAL Journal of Accounting Literature
JAR Journal of Accounting Research
JBFA Journal of Business Finance and
Accounting
JCM Journal of Cost Management
JIS Journal of Information Systems
JIFMA Journal of International Financial
Management and Accounting
JMAR Journal of Management Accounting
Research
JATA Journal of the American Taxation
Association
MA Management Accounting
MAR Management Accounting Research
NPA National Public Accountant
NTJ National Tax Journal
OCPA Ohio CPA
RAE Research On Accounting Ethics
RAS Review of Accounting Studies
WCPA Woman CPA
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doc_184378342.pdf
Prior literature on accounting journal rankings has provided different journal lists depending
on the type of examination (citations- vs. survey-based) and the choice of journals covered.
A recent study by Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young (2006) [Bonner, S.,
Hesford, A., Van der Stede, W. A., & Young, M. S. (2006). The most influential journals in
academic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31(7), 663–685] documents
disproportionately more citations in the financial accounting area, suggesting a financial
accounting bias in the accounting literature. We use citations from accounting dissertations
completed during 1999–2003 to provide a ranking of accounting journals. The database
allows us to assess the research interests of new accounting scholars and the
literature sources they draw from.a
Ranking accounting journals using dissertation citation
analysis: A research note
Kam C. Chan
a,
*
, Kam C. Chan
b,1
, Gim S. Seow
c,2
, Kinsun Tam
d,3
a
Department of Accounting, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY 10570, USA
b
Department of Finance, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA
c
Department of Accounting, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
d
Department of Accounting, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA
a b s t r a c t
Prior literature on accounting journal rankings has provided different journal lists depend-
ing on the type of examination (citations- vs. survey-based) and the choice of journals cov-
ered. A recent study by Bonner, Hesford, Van der Stede, and Young (2006) [Bonner, S.,
Hesford, A., Van der Stede, W. A., & Young, M. S. (2006). The most in?uential journals in
academic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 31(7), 663–685] documents
disproportionately more citations in the ?nancial accounting area, suggesting a ?nancial
accounting bias in the accounting literature. We use citations from accounting disserta-
tions completed during 1999–2003 to provide a ranking of accounting journals. The data-
base allows us to assess the research interests of new accounting scholars and the
literature sources they draw from. Another innovation is our ranking of accounting journals
based on specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, tax, systems, and other) and
research methods (archival, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). To mitigate the
?nancial accounting bias documented by Bonner et al. (2006), we derive a ranking metric
by scaling (normalizing) the journal citations by the number of dissertations within each
specialty area and research method. Overall, the top journals are, JAR, AOS, TAR, and JAE.
We also provide evidence that top journal rankings do vary by specialty area as well as
by research methods.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Publishing research in high-quality journals is an inte-
gral part of academic life. Therefore, researchers often refer
to journal rankings when making decisions to submit and
publish their research. Moreover, personnel decisions such
as tenure, promotion, hiring, and merit allocations also
correlate with the quality of research, which in turn, re-
lates to where the faculty members publish their research.
In addition, faculty members who teach research seminars
in accounting doctoral programs often refer to journal
rankings when setting their reading lists.
Studies of journal rankings in accounting research have
a long history. A recent study by Bonner et al. (2006) pro-
vides an up-to-date perspective on this subject. Bonner
et al. (2006) summarize all major studies as of 2004 and of-
fer several useful observations and analyses. First, they doc-
ument that The Accounting Review (TAR), Journal of
Accounting Research (JAR), Journal of Accounting and Econom-
ics (JAE), Accounting, Organizations, and Society (AOS) and
Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR) are consistently
ranked as the top ?ve accounting journals over at least
the last two decades. Second, by examining the distribution
of published articles from1984 to 2003 with respect to var-
ious accounting areas, the authors ?nd that ?nancial
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2008.12.002
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 914 773 3912.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K.C. Chan), [email protected]
(K.C. Chan), [email protected] (G.S. Seow), [email protected]
(K. Tam).
1
Tel.: +1 270 745 2977.
2
Tel.: +1 860 486 3019.
3
Tel.: +1 518 442 4950.
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Accounting, Organizations and Society
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ aos
accounting (managerial accounting) articles appear in dis-
proportionately larger (smaller) numbers in these ?ve jour-
nals except for AOS. Moreover, systems and tax articles
appear less frequently during the same 20-year period in
the ?ve journals while auditing articles appear rather
evenly in the ?ve journals except in JAE, which publishes
fewer auditing articles. Bonner et al. (2006) ?ndings sug-
gest that caution is in order when using journal rankings
to gauge research performance by accounting faculty be-
cause of differences in each journal’s ‘theme’, which may
most affect faculty who are in a specialty other than ?nan-
cial accounting. Hence, it may not be appropriate to use re-
sults from accounting ranking studies ‘‘as is” without
quali?cations. While Bonner et al. (2006) discussion is
insightful, they do not offer a ranking of accounting journals
that accounts for the ?nancial accounting bias.
The objective of this paper is to provide an alternative
accounting journal ranking by analyzing citations in
accounting doctoral dissertations. We provide a general
ranking as well as rankings by specialty areas and by re-
search methods. Our study extends the literature in several
aspects. First, our dissertation citation study represents a
new approach to the journal ranking literature. This ap-
proach follows the conventional wisdom that citations
are useful to gauge the quality of journals (Gar?eld,
1972). We argue that dissertations are major accomplish-
ments by new doctorate holders. Doctoral dissertations
are supervised by doctoral committees consisting of ex-
perts who may be from other departments and/or univer-
sities. Thus, dissertations represent signi?cant research
completed by new accounting scholars within a rigorous
environment. Citations in these dissertations are founda-
tions of new accounting scholars’ research. Therefore, cita-
tions in the accounting dissertations represent the
in?uence of accounting journals on the work of these
new scholars. Second, because of the dif?culties involved
in coding citation data, citation-based studies in the
accounting literature mainly use citations in a limited
number of journals selected by the respective authors,
thereby creating a potential bias towards the selected jour-
nals. For example, if a study counts citations only in TAR,
JAR, and JAE, it is not surprising that the counts will favor
these three journals. Our dissertation citation approach
mitigates this self-citation bias by not specifying a prede-
termined set of accounting journals in the sampling pro-
cess. Third, extending Bonner et al. (2006), we produce
accounting journal rankings for different specialty areas.
In addition, we also adjust for the dissertation specialty
areas to mitigate the ?nancial accounting bias. Last, we
also present journal rankings by research methods (archi-
val, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). Since re-
search methods cut across different specialty areas, they
provide further evidence that journal rankings can vary
by research methods as well.
Literature review
Bonner et al. (2006) provide a comprehensive literature
review in accounting journal ranking studies up to 2004.
Therefore, our literature review of journal ranking studies
primarily focuses on the literature that was not included
in Bonner et al. (2006) or that appeared during and after
2004.
Brown (2003) examines publication outlets of 223
heavily downloaded papers in the Social Science Research
Network (SSRN). He derives journal rankings from a subset
of these 223 papers that are subsequently published in
1999–2001. Brown (2003) reports that the top ?ve journals
are JAE, TAR, JAR, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial
Economics. To mitigate the ?nancial accounting bias, he
provides a separate ranking of ?nancial accounting vs.
non-?nancial accounting journals based on the authors’ re-
ported teaching/research interests in Hasselback’s
Accounting Faculty Directory. However, the resulting top
?ve ranked journals among his non-?nancial accounting
category are still primarily journals that published dispro-
portionately more ?nancial accounting articles. While
Brown’s approach is new and interesting, its use of SSRN
papers introduces a self-selection bias because whether
authors upload their papers to SSRN is a self-selection
behavior. Therefore, the approach does not effectively mit-
igate the ?nancial accounting bias, among other possible
biases.
Herron and Hall (2004) conducted a comprehensive e-
survey on the perceptions of journal rankings in account-
ing. They contacted 3806 tenure-track accounting faculty
listed in Hasselback’s 2003 Accounting Faculty Directory
and received a 16% response rate. Besides updating previ-
ous survey studies, Herron and Hall (2004) also asked
respondents if they could publish their research in a partic-
ular journal with a reasonable effort. In addition, Herron
and Hall (2004) recognized the phenomenon of under-rep-
resentation in several accounting specialties and they used
a weighting scheme to mitigate the raw response rates to
control for the disproportionately high-response rate from
?nancial accounting researchers. By eliminating the non-
accounting journals in their list, the top ?ve accounting
journals they derived were JAR, JAE, TAR, National Tax Jour-
nal (NTJ), and CAR. Also, Herron and Hall (2004) presented
journal rankings by specialty areas.
Reinstein and Calderon (2006) asked 295 department
chairs (273 US, 7 Canadian, and 15 non-North American)
in the American Accounting Association’s (AAA) Account-
ing Leadership Program on the use of accounting journal
lists for promotion, tenure, and performance evaluations.
Of the 145 respondents (49.2% response rate), only 19
(13%) reported having such journal ranking lists. Among
these 19, the top ?ve journals are TAR, JAR, JAE, CAR, and
Journal of the American Taxation Association (JATA).
Lowensohn and Samelson (2006) surveyed 2464 AAA
section members regarding journal rankings in various
specialty areas as well as their opinions on whether a jour-
nal is one of the top-three accounting journals. Using in-
puts from 517 respondents (21% usable response), they
identi?ed the top-?ve journals as TAR, AOS, JATA, Behavioral
Research in Accounting (BRIA), and JAR. As expected, their
results also indicated that AAA members have different
perceptions of top accounting journals with respect to var-
ious specialty areas.
Beattie and Goodacre (2006) ranked journals based on
the Research and Assessment Exercise (RAE) data in the
876 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
UK in 2001. The RAE is a peer-reviewed process that asks
all UK universities to report their faculty’s published re-
search over a 5-year period to respective business disci-
pline committees. The goal of this process is to assess the
research performance of each university. Beattie and Good-
acre (2006) use the accounting area data to derive journal
ranking. Their top ?ve accounting journals are JAR,
Accounting and Business Research (ABR), AOS, Journal of Busi-
ness Finance and Accounting (JBFA), and Accounting Histori-
ans Journal (AHJ).
Chan and Liano (2009) use a threshold citation ap-
proach to rank journals. They examine in?uential account-
ing journals, institutions and articles cited in AOS, CAR, JAE,
JAR, and TAR during 2000–2004 to rank journals. Unlike
other citation studies, Chan and Liano (2009) include only
articles that are cited at least ?ve times. The top ?ve
accounting journals in Chan and Liano (2009) are JAR,
JAE, TAR, AOS, and CAR. Chan and Liano (2009), however,
do not adjust for over-representation of citations in the
?nancial accounting area and do not offer journal rankings
in different specialty areas.
Table 1 presents a summary of this recent literature.
Both Herron and Hall (2004) and Reinstein and Calderon
(2006) have a tax journal replacing AOS in their top ?ve
lists; however, Herron and Hall (2004) suggest NTJ while
Reinstein and Calderon (2006) rank JATA as the top tax
journal in their top ?ve lists. Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006) report that BRIA and JATA replace JAE and CAR in
the top ?ve journal list. Herron and Hall (2004), and
Lowensohn and Samelson (2006) provide survey results
regarding journal rankings in the specialty areas. Chan
and Liano (2008) have the same top ?ve journals as in
the prior literature using a different citation analysis
but they do not offer journal rankings in different
accounting specialties. On the other hand, Beattie and
Goodacre (2006) use a totally different approach and
have a strictly UK-focus. The top ?ve accounting journals
in Beattie and Goodacre (2006) are different from the
prior literature.
With the exception of Brown (2003) and Chan and Liano
(2009), the recent literature is based on either surveys or
subjective peer-reviews. Our study complements these
studies by analyzing citations in recent accounting disser-
tations. We offer a general ranking as well as by specialty
area and research method. Citations obtained in our study
originate from an extensive set of accounting journals, and
we classify dissertations into different research areas
based on their content.
Data
We use citations in recent accounting dissertations to
develop accounting journal rankings. These dissertations
are obtained from ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses dat-
abases provided by UMI. ProQuest classi?es dissertations
by subject area. This study uses only dissertations classi-
?ed by ProQuest as accounting. To make data collection
manageable and allow time for dissertation authors to
publish their work derived from dissertations, we include
all accounting dissertations from January 1999 through
December 2003. Dissertations dated within this period
are freely downloadable. Dissertations completed after
2003 are expensive to download.
4
At the time of our data
collection, there were 437 dissertations in accounting within
our sampling period. This initial sample is further ?ltered
with the following selection criteria to arrive at a ?nal sam-
ple of 247 dissertations:
Table 1
Recent journal ranking studies in accounting.
Study Data/research method Major ?ndings
Chan and
Liano
(2008)
Use citations in AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR during 2000–2004 to rank
journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are JAR, JAE, TAR, AOS, and CAR
Include only cited articles that have at least ?ve citations Also ranked accounting programs and in?uential articles
Herron and
Hall (2004)
Survey tenure-track faculty regarding their perceptions of journal
ranking and publishing feasibility
The top ?ve accounting journals are JAR, JAE, TAR, NTJ (National Tax
Journal), and CAR
a
Use a weighting scheme to adjust the survey results and hence, they
compensate under-represented group of survey respondents
Also reported top journals in various accounting areas
Reinstein and
Calderon
(2006)
Conduct investigations at accounting department levels to ascertain
the journal ranking departments actually used in promotion, tenure,
and performance evaluations
Only 13% (19 out of 145 departments) of the accounting
departments have a list of accounting journals
The top 5 journals: TAR, JAR, JAE, CAR, and JATA (Journal of
American Taxation Association)
Beattie and
Goodacre
(2006)
Use UK universities’ Research and Assessment Exercise (RAE)
submitted data on accounting journal publications in 2001 to rank
journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are: JAR, ABR (Accounting and
Business Research), AOS, JBFA (Journal of Business Finance and
Accounting), and AHJ (Accounting Historians Journal)
Include non-accounting journals
Lowensohn
and
Samelson
(2006)
Conduct survey using AAA section membership to identify top
academic journals
The top ?ve accounting journals are: TAR, AOS, JATA, BRIA, and JAR
Also examine top journals in behavioral, tax, managerial,
government and non-pro?t, and systems specialty areas
Brown (2003) Use the number and percent frequency of articles a journal publishes
that are heavily downloaded from the Social Science Research
Network (SSRN) as the ranking criteria
The top ?ve journals are JAE, JAR, Journal of Finance, TAR, and the
Journal of Financial Economics
Include ?nance journals
a
Finance, management, and MIS journals are also ranked. We only list the accounting journals.
4
The cost is $37 per dissertation.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 877
Full text (not only the abstract) must be available for
each dissertation because this study needs to process
the reference list;
We include only Ph.D. or DBA level dissertations; and
The author must appear in Hasselback’s Accounting Fac-
ulty Directory 2004–2005 or 2006–2007.
5
The ?nal sample of 247 dissertations represents 84 US
universities (64 public and 20 private), and 6 foreign uni-
versities that contribute 11 dissertations to the sample of
247.
We use a software utility to electronically convert the
reference sections of these dissertations from the portable
document format (pdf) into text ?les. Conversion errors are
manually checked and corrected. To compile data for this
study, we write a computer program to read these text
?les. Each referenced article is represented as a record con-
sisting of the ?rst author’s last name, publication year,
starting page number and the journal name. The computer
program maintains a list of 122 journals covered in prior
accounting journal ranking studies as summarized in Bon-
ner et al. (2006) (i.e., Nobes, 1986; Hull & Wright, 1990;
Schroeder, Payne, & Harris, 1988; Hall and Ross, 1991;
Brown & Huefner, 1994; Smith, 1994; Jolly, Schroeder, &
Spear, 1995; Brinn, Jones, & Pendleburg, 1996; Ballas &
Theoharakis, 2003). The program determines if the journal
name of each record can be successfully matched to a jour-
nal on this list. The 247 dissertations generate 6386 suc-
cessfully matched accounting journal citations.
Next, we classify the dissertations by specialty areas
and dissertation research methods. The specialty areas
are auditing, ?nancial, managerial, systems and tax.
6
Dis-
sertations not in the above ?ve specialty areas are classi?ed
as ‘other’. The research methods are archival, experimental,
modeling, and survey/?eld.
7
Again, there are a few disserta-
tions with unique research methods that we classify as
‘other’.
8
Two of the coauthors did the classi?cations. For
the majority of the sample, the classi?cation was clear. For
seven dissertations where the two coauthors disagreed on
the classi?cation, a third coauthor offered his judgment to
resolve those cases.
To compare across different universities, we identify
top 20 universities from the Financial Times’ 2003 re-
search-based list of top 30 global business schools.
9
We
compare dissertations granted by the top 20 universities
with accounting doctoral programs vs. other universities as
well as published vs. unpublished dissertations. We conduct
author search on major research databases during a ?ve-
year period after the dissertation date. If an author publishes
an article consistent with the dissertation topic, we consider
the dissertation as published. To assess the sensitivity of our
results, we provide separate journal rankings based on (1)
dissertations from top-ranking/other universities, and (2)
published/unpublished dissertations.
Results
Descriptive frequency
We present the frequency by specialty areas and re-
search methods in Table 2, Panel A. Financial accounting
accounts for the largest number of dissertations (136 of
247), followed by managerial accounting, a distant second
with 37 dissertations. There are 28, 18, and 9 auditing, tax,
and systems dissertations, respectively. With respect to re-
search method, there are 150 archival dissertations fol-
lowed by 64 experimental dissertations.
We present a cross tab of citations by specialty areas
and research methods in Table 2, Panel B. As expected,
?nancial accounting dissertations that primarily use archi-
val research approach generate 3564 citations of the total
of 3822 citations by that area. Auditing and managerial
dissertations that primarily use experimental or survey
methods produce 901 and 838 citations, respectively.
To gain insight into how published dissertations and
top-institution dissertations may affect our ?ndings, we
present a breakdown of the number of dissertations and
citations by publication outcome and institution level in
Table 2, Panel C. Out of 244 dissertations, 88 (36.1%) are
published.
10
Top 20 programs account for 61 (25.0%) of all
dissertations. Among the top 20 program, there are 41%
(25/61) of the dissertations published. For the non-top pro-
grams, there are 34% (63/183) of the dissertations published.
Published dissertations contribute 36.9% (2304 out of 6248)
of citations and dissertations from top 20 programs contrib-
ute 22.6% (1409 out of 6248). We conduct v
2
tests on the
number of dissertations and citations to study the relation-
ship between publication outcome and institution level.
We cannot reject the null hypotheses of independence. Thus,
whether a dissertation is published or not is not associated
with level of the degree-granting institution.
We also examine whether the type of institution (public
vs. private) can affect publication outcome. The results are
in Table 2, Panel D. There are a total of 49 dissertations
from private institutions and 16 (33%) of these published.
On the other hand, there are 195 dissertations from public
institutions and 72 (36%) of these published. The difference
is not statistically signi?cant.
Journal rankings weighted by dissertation research method
Our data consists of 6386 matched accounting citations
from 247 dissertations. Because we con?ne our citation to
5
In a private email correspondence with Professor James R. Hasselback,
author of the Hasselback Accounting Faculty Director, he informed us that
once an accounting doctorate holder enters the directory the individual’s
record remains in the directory permanently, and that all future events
pertaining to that individual (e.g. leaving academia, retirement, death) are
periodically updated in the Alphabetical by Individual section.
6
We classify dissertation areas such as international or non-pro?t into
one of the ?ve major areas.
7
Unlike an experiment, a dissertation that uses the survey or ?eld study
method collects data through mail, emails or interviews.
8
For example, three dissertations in the ‘Other’ category are written in
French (Canadian), although their bibliographies are in English.
9
The Financial Times’ ranking includes schools without doctoral pro-
grams as well as those that did not grant accounting doctoral degrees
during our sample period.
10
We exclude three dissertations in French because we do not know if
they were published. This reduces the number of dissertations to 244 and
the number of citations to 6248.
878 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
accounting journals, we have, on average, approximately
26 accounting journal citations per dissertation. If we in-
clude all citations from all journals, there are approxi-
mately 82 citations per dissertation.
Table 3 presents the results of journal ranking by disser-
tation research method (archival, experimental, modeling,
survey, and other). We present the percentage share of
citations with respect to each research method in the last
row. The archival method dominates with 63.1% of cita-
tions. Experimental, modeling and survey methods have
25.2%, 1.8%, and 7.8% of total citations, respectively.
To control for the disproportionately large number of
archival-based dissertations, we present total citations
and citations per dissertation with respect to each research
method in Table 3. Essentially, citations per dissertation
are total citations to each journal in each research method
divided by the number of dissertations in the same re-
search method. By using the total citations per disserta-
tion, we are able to mitigate the effects of uneven
distribution of dissertations across various research meth-
ods. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for overrepresen-
tation of archival dissertations, and measures the impact of
individual journals within each research method. Sum-
ming the total citations per dissertation metrics across all
research methods (including the ‘‘other” category) creates
the weighted total citations per dissertation. That is, we
sum columns (4), (6), (8), (10), and (12) across different
journals. Hence, the weighted total citations per disserta-
tion are the weighted average of citations per dissertation
weighted by the total number of dissertations in each re-
search method. We then use the weighted total citations
per dissertation as the journal ranking metric. According
to the last column in Table 3, the overall top-?ve account-
ing journals based on this metric are TAR, JAR, AOS, JAE, and
BRIA (Behavioral Research in Accounting). It is clear that dif-
ferent journals have different impact on dissertation re-
search methods. For instance, AOS does well among
survey and experimental authors while JAE is the top-cited
journal among archival dissertations.
Journal rankings weighted by dissertation specialty area
Table 4 presents journal rankings by research spe-
cialty area. We decompose the total citations into the
?ve specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, sys-
tems, and tax) plus an ‘‘other” area. The last row shows
the percentage share of citations in each specialty. The
?nancial dissertation category accounts for 59.8% of total
citations.
We present total citations per dissertation in each spe-
cialty area in Table 4, Columns (4), (6), (8), (10), (12), and
(14). The total number of citations per dissertation ap-
proach is similar to that of Table 3 with the exception that
we use the number of dissertations in each specialty area
instead of research method in the weighting process. ‘‘Cita-
tions per dissertation” in Table 4 measures the impact of
Table 2
Citation/dissertation count by year, specialty area, research method, and publication outcome.
Research method Specialty area
Auditing Financial Managerial Systems Tax Other Total
Panel A: Number of dissertations by specialty area and research method
Archival 3 126 6 1 11 3 150
Experimental 22 6 19 4 5 8 64
Modeling 2 4 2 2 10
Survey 1 10 2 2 5 20
Other 3 3
Total 28 136 37 9 18 19 247
Panel B: Number of citations by specialty area and research method
Archival 140 3564 129 4 145 50 4032
Experimental 721 189 368 84 78 167 1607
Modeling 14 69 24 7 114
Survey 26 0 317 27 28 97 495
Other 138 138
Total 901 3822 838 122 251 452 6386
Level of institution Publication outcome
Unpublished dissertations Published dissertations Total
Panel C: Number of dissertations/Number of citations by level of doctoral-granting institution and publication outcome
Top 20 institutions 36/870 25/539 61/1409
Other institutions 120/3074 63/1765 183/4839
Total 156/3944 88/2304 244
*
/6248
Panel D: Number of dissertations/Number of citations by funding of doctoral-granting institution and publication outcome
Private institutions 33/941 16/399 49/1340
Public institutions 123/3003 72/1905 195/4908
Total 156/3944 88/2304 244
*
/6248
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of dissertations) = 0.85 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of citations) = 1.48 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of dissertations) = 0.31 (p > 0.10).
v
2
(Level of institution and publication outcome on total number of citations) = 36.94 (p < 0.01).
*
Three dissertations in French were excluded because we could not determine if they were published.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 879
respective journals in each specialty area. The top-?ve
journals in Table 4 are TAR, JAR, AOS, JAE, and Auditing.
Comparison of ranking results by research method and
specialty area
There are similarities and differences in the results pre-
sented in Tables 3 and 4. To facilitate the comparison, we
present the top 10 journals using both approaches in Table
5. Two results emerge. First, after mitigating the ?nancial
accounting and archival method over-representation, we
conclude that the top four journals are TAR, JAR, AOS, and
JAE. The ?ndings are robust to weighing by research meth-
ods and specialty areas. Second, while CAR is traditionally
rankedinthetop?ve, our results showthat Auditingreplaces
CAR as one of the top-?ve journals when we weight by spe-
cialtyarea. If weweight byresearchmethod, BRIAmakes it to
the top ?ve. Our new top-?ve journal ranking suggests that
the journal rankings in the existing literature may be the re-
sult of ?nancial accounting and archival method bias.
Table 3
Citations by journal and research method.
Journal Archival (150
dissertations)
Experimental (64
dissertations)
Modeling (10
dissertations)
Survey (20
dissertations)
Other (3
dissertations)
Total
(2)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (4)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (6)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (8)
Cites Cites per Diss.
(10)
Cites Cites per Diss.
(12)
Wtd.
total
TAR 1263 798 5.32 333 5.20 22 2.20 86 4.30 24 8.00 25.02
JAR 1281 912 6.08 275 4.30 35 3.50 41 2.05 18 6.00 21.93
AOS 360 60 0.40 166 2.59 1 0.10 91 4.55 42 14.00 21.64
JAE 1030 935 6.23 53 0.83 18 1.80 9 0.45 15 5.00 14.31
BRIA 87 2 0.01 51 0.80 0.00 25 1.25 9 3.00 5.06
JMAR 91 10 0.07 44 0.69 0.00 31 1.55 6 2.00 4.30
CAR 271 202 1.35 48 0.75 17 1.70 3 0.15 1 0.33 4.28
AUDIT 216 35 0.23 167 2.61 5 0.50 9 0.45 0.00 3.79
AH 273 196 1.31 64 1.00 0.00 12 0.60 1 0.33 3.24
MA 74 21 0.14 19 0.30 0.00 32 1.60 2 0.67 2.70
JAL 98 42 0.28 41 0.64 1 0.10 11 0.55 3 1.00 2.57
MAR 24 0.00 4 0.06 1 0.10 14 0.70 5 1.67 2.53
ABR 79 48 0.32 23 0.36 0.00 4 0.20 4 1.33 2.21
IAE 73 3 0.02 50 0.78 0.00 20 1.00 0.00 1.80
JBFA 133 116 0.77 14 0.22 1 0.10 0.00 2 0.67 1.76
JA 106 63 0.42 36 0.56 0.00 6 0.30 1 0.33 1.62
JCM 35 3 0.02 9 0.14 0.00 22 1.10 1 0.33 1.59
JAAF 139 124 0.83 12 0.19 3 0.30 0.00 0.00 1.31
CPAJ 54 23 0.15 21 0.33 2 0.20 8 0.40 0.00 1.08
RAS 64 55 0.37 3 0.05 6 0.60 0.00 0.00 1.01
NTJ 69 50 0.33 10 0.16 0.00 9 0.45 0.00 0.94
JATA 78 52 0.35 22 0.34 0.00 4 0.20 0.00 0.89
JAED 32 0.00 24 0.38 0.00 8 0.40 0.00 0.78
IA 23 5 0.03 6 0.09 0.00 12 0.60 0.00 0.73
AF 25 15 0.10 5 0.08 0.00 4 0.20 1 0.33 0.71
JIS 33 3 0.02 26 0.41 1 0.10 3 0.15 0.00 0.68
JAPP 70 67 0.45 1 0.02 1 0.10 1 0.05 0.00 0.61
AAAJ 21 11 0.07 9 0.14 0.00 0.00 1 0.33 0.55
BAR 7 2 0.01 0.00 0.00 4 0.20 1 0.33 0.55
AA 23 6 0.04 15 0.23 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.37
CAM 2 1 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0.33 0.34
AY 31 26 0.17 3 0.05 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.32
AT 9 0.00 6 0.09 0.00 3 0.15 0.00 0.24
JIFMA 26 23 0.15 2 0.03 0.00 1 0.05 0.00 0.23
RAE 10 0.00 8 0.13 0.00 2 0.10 0.00 0.23
WCPA 7 2 0.01 1 0.02 0.00 4 0.20 0.00 0.23
CPOA 15 8 0.05 6 0.09 0.00 1 0.00 0.20
All other
journals
154 113 30 0 11 0
Total
citations
6386 4032 1607 114 495 138
% Share 63.1% 25.2% 1.8% 7.8% 2.2%
Table 3 presents journal rankings by dissertation research method (archival, experimental, modeling, survey, and other). The total number of citations is in
column (2). We present the percentage shares of the citations corresponding to each research methods in the bottom row of this table. The archival method
dominates with 63.1% of citations. Experimental, modeling, and survey methods have 25.2%, 1.8%, and 7.8% of total citations, respectively. To control for the
disproportionately large number of archival-based dissertations, we present total citations per dissertation by research method. Essentially, we divide the
total citations to each journal in each research method by the number of dissertations in the same research method. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for
overrepresentation of archival dissertations, and measures the impact of individual journals within each research method. Summing the total citations per
dissertation measures across all research methods creates the weighted total citations per dissertation (sum of columns (4), (6), (8), (10), and (12)). Hence,
the weighted total citations per dissertation are the weighted average of citations per dissertation weighted by the total number of dissertations in each
research method. We then use the weighted total citations per dissertation in the last column as the journal ranking metric.
880 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Table 4
Citations by journal and specialty area.
Journal Auditing (28
dissertations)
Financial (136
dissertations)
Managerial (37
dissertations)
Systems (9
dissertations)
Tax (18
dissertations)
Other (19
dissertations)
Total
(2)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (4)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (6)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (8)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (10)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (12)
Cites Cites per
Diss. (14)
Wtd
total
TAR 1263 190 6.79 769 5.65 201 5.43 21 2.33 37 2.06 45 2.37 24.63
JAR 1281 185 6.61 915 6.73 114 3.08 15 1.67 29 1.61 23 1.21 20.90
AOS 360 72 2.57 46 0.34 161 4.35 4 0.44 6 0.33 71 3.74 11.78
JAE 1030 33 1.18 905 6.65 57 1.54 0.00 19 1.06 16 0.84 11.27
AUDIT 216 168 6.00 21 0.15 3 0.08 8 0.89 6 0.33 10 0.53 7.98
AH 273 38 1.36 195 1.43 21 0.57 1 0.11 6 0.33 12 0.63 4.43
BRIA 87 26 0.93 3 0.02 22 0.59 11 1.22 2 0.11 23 1.21 4.09
CAR 271 47 1.68 203 1.49 11 0.30 0.00 2 0.11 8 0.42 4.00
IAE 73 2 0.07 4 0.03 8 0.22 1 0.11 0.00 58 3.05 3.48
JATA 78 2 0.07 16 0.12 2 0.05 0.00 58 3.22 0.00 3.47
NTJ 69 0.00 11 0.08 0 0.00 0.00 53 2.94 5 0.26 3.29
JA 106 16 0.57 56 0.41 2 0.05 4 0.44 4 0.22 24 1.26 2.97
JIS 33 1 0.04 3 0.02 6 0.16 23 2.56 0.00 0.00 2.78
JMAR 91 0.00 1 0.01 83 2.24 1 0.11 0.00 6 0.32 2.68
MA 74 3 0.11 20 0.15 26 0.70 4 0.44 0.00 21 1.11 2.51
JAL 98 18 0.64 43 0.32 23 0.62 0.00 10 0.56 4 0.21 2.35
CPAJ 54 14 0.5 19 0.14 0.00 4 0.44 0.00 17 0.89 1.98
JCM 35 0.00 2 0.01 20 0.54 12 1.33 0.00 1 0.05 1.94
JAED 32 0.00 2 0.01 1 0.03 0.00 0.00 29 1.53 1.57
JBFA 133 10 0.36 116 0.85 2 0.05 0.00 3 0.17 2 0.11 1.54
JAAF 139 11 0.39 122 0.9 3 0.08 0.00 2 0.11 1 0.05 1.53
MAR 24 0.00 1 0.01 10 0.27 8 0.89 0.00 5 0.26 1.43
ABR 79 7 0.25 56 0.41 10 0.27 1 0.11 0.00 5 0.26 1.31
JAPP 70 9 0.32 43 0.32 16 0.43 1 0.11 0.00 1 0.05 1.23
IA 23 18 0.64 0.00 5 0.14 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.78
AF 25 5 0.18 9 0.07 5 0.14 0.00 2 0.11 4 0.21 0.7
AA 23 10 0.36 9 0.07 1 0.03 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.61
RAS 64 3 0.11 58 0.43 3 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.61
AAAJ 21 2 0.07 11 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0.42 0.57
CPOA 15 1 0.04 5 0.04 0.00 0.00 0.00 9 0.47 0.55
AY 31 3 0.11 25 0.18 0.00 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.45
RAE 10 0.00 2 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0.42 0.44
OCPA 15 0.00 8 0.06 0.00 0.00 0.00 7 0.37 0.43
AB 20 1 0.04 16 0.12 3 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.23
NPA 12 0.00 9 0.07 0.00 0.00 1 0.06 2 0.11 0.23
JIFMA 26 0.00 25 0.18 1 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.21
EAR 10 1 0.04 9 0.07 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.1
IJA 14 0.00 14 0.1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.1
All other journals 108 5 50 18 3 9 23
Total citations 6386 901 3822 838 122 251 452
% share 14.1% 59.8% 13.1% 1.9% 3.9% 7.1%
Table 4 presents journal rankings by dissertation specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, systems, tax, and other). The total number of citations is in
column (2). We present the percentage shares of the citations corresponding to each specialty area in the bottomrowof this table. The ?nancial dissertations
have 59.8%of all citations while auditingis adistant secondwith12.1%. Tocontrol for thedisproportionatelylarge number of ?nancial dissertations, we present
total citations per dissertation by each specialty area. Essentially, we divide the total citations to each journal in each specialty area by the number of
dissertations in the same specialty area. ‘‘Citations per dissertation” controls for overrepresentation of ?nancial dissertations, and measures the impact of
individual journals within each specialty area. Summing the total citations per dissertation measures across all specialty areas creates the weighted total
citations per dissertation (sum of columns (4), (6), (8), (10), (12) and (14)). Hence, the weighted total citations per dissertation are the weighted average of
citations per dissertation weighted by the total number of dissertations in each specialty area. We then use the weighted total citations per dissertation in the
last column as the journal ranking metric.
Table 5
Overall journal ranking by citations weighted by research method and specialty area.
Rank Weighted by research method Weighted by specialty area
1 The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
2 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research
3 Accounting Organizations and Society Accounting, Organizations and Society
4 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Accounting and Economics
5 Behavioral Research in Accounting Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
6 Journal of Management Accounting Research Accounting Horizons
7 Contemporary Accounting Research Behavioral Research in Accounting
8 Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory Contemporary Accounting Research
9 Accounting Horizons Issues in Accounting Education
10 Management Accounting Journal of the American Taxation Association
Table 5 presents the top 10 journals based on research method (Table 3) and specialty area (Table 4) weighting.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 881
Rankings by research method and specialty area
Table 6 presents journal rankings according to different
research methods. Table 6 is based on Table 3 along the
four major dissertation research methods. Both JAR and
TAR appear as top-?ve journals in every research method.
JAE and CAR also show up on the top-?ve journal list for
both archival and modeling dissertations. AOS is the top
journal among survey dissertations and it is ranked fourth
among experimental dissertations. Several other journals
appear as a top-?ve journal in each of the research
methods.
Table 6
Journal rankings by research method.
Rank Archival Experimental Modeling Survey
1 Journal of Accounting and
Economics
The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research Accounting Organizations and Society
2 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
3 The Accounting Review Auditing: A Journal of Practice and
Theory
Journal of Accounting and
Economics
Journal of Accounting Research
4 Contemporary Accounting
Research
Accounting Organizations and
Society
Contemporary Accounting
Research
Management Accounting
5 Accounting Horizons Accounting Horizons Review of Accounting Studies Journal of Management Accounting
Research
Table 6 presents the top-?ve accounting journals based on archival, experimental, modeling and survey research method.
Table 7
Journal rankings by citations from each specialty area.
Rank Present study Herron and Hall (2004) Lowensohn and Samelson (2006)
Panel A: Auditing
1 The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research NA
2 Journal of Accounting Research The Accounting Review NA
3 Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory Contemporary Accounting Research NA
4 Accounting, Organizations and Society Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory NA
5 Contemporary Accounting Research Accounting, Organizations and Society NA
Panel B: Financial
1 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Accounting Research NA
2 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Accounting and Economics NA
3 The Accounting Review The Accounting Review NA
4 Contemporary Accounting Research Contemporary Accounting Research NA
5 Accounting Horizons Review of Accounting Studies NA
Panel C: Managerial
1 The Accounting Review Journal of Accounting Research Journal of Management Accounting Research
2 Accounting, Organizations and Society The Accounting Review The Accounting Review
3 Journal of Accounting Research Accounting, Organizations and Society Accounting, Organizations and Society
4 Journal of Management Accounting
Research
Contemporary Accounting Research (tied for 4
th
) Journal of Accounting Research
5 Journal of Accounting and Economics Journal of Management Accounting Research (tied for
4
th
)
Journal of Accounting and Economics
Panel D: Systems
1 Journal of Information Systems Management Science Journal of Information Systems
2 The Accounting Review Administrative Science Quarterly MIS Quarterly
3 Journal of Accounting Research Information Systems Research International Journal of Accounting Information
Systems
4 Journal of Cost Management MIS Quarterly Information Systems Research
5 Behavioral Research In Accounting Accounting Organizations and Society NA
Panel E: Tax
1 Journal of The American Taxation
Association
The Accounting Review Journal of The American Taxation Association
2 National Tax Journal Journal of Accounting and Economics National Tax Journal
3 The Accounting Review National Tax Journal Advances in Taxation
4 Journal of Accounting Research Journal of the American Taxation Association The Accounting Review
5 Journal of Accounting and Economics Contemporary Accounting Research Journal of Accounting and Economics
Based on Table 4, we present the top-?ve journal rankings in each of the ?ve specialty areas here. We also include the top-?ve journals in the surveys by
Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson (2006), where available, for comparison. To facilitate comparison, we remove non-accounting
journals from Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson (2006). Except for the systems specialty, we move accounting journals up accordingly.
882 K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885
Based on Table 4, we present the top-?ve journal
rankings in each of the ?ve specialty areas in Table 7.
We also include the top-?ve journals in the surveys by
Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006), where available, for comparison. To facilitate
comparison, we eliminate non-accounting journals from
Herron and Hall (2004), and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006).
11
For the auditing specialty in Table 7, Panel A,
our ?ndings are the same as Herron and Hall (2004).
Auditing replaces JAE as a top-?ve accounting journal and
the remaining four journals are unchanged. For the ?nan-
cial specialty, both our study and Herron and Hall (2004)
report the same top-four journals. Our study places AH as
the ?fth-ranked journal and Herron and Hall (2004) rank
RAS as the ?fth-ranked journal. Consistent with Bonner
et al.’s (2006) ?ndings, AOS is not in the top-?ve in the
?nancial specialty area.
For the managerial specialty in Table 7, Panel C, all three
studies offer similar ?ndings. First, AOS is consistently
ranked in the top-three, second in our study, and third in
both Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and Samelson
(2006). Second, JMAR emerges as a top-?ve journal in all
three studies. For the systems specialty shown in Panel
D, there are differences among the three studies. Our ?nd-
ings suggest that Journal of Information Systems, TAR, JAR,
Journal of Cost Management, and BRIA are the top-?ve jour-
nals. Both Herron and Hall (2004) and Lowensohn and
Samelson (2006) have different ?ndings. The results for
the tax specialty ranking are in Panel E. Our results are con-
sistent with the other two studies. Both JATA and NTJ are in
the top-?ve and AOS is not in the top-?ve in any of the
three studies.
The results in Table 7 suggest that different journal
rankings apply to different specialty areas. Our specialty-
speci?c journal rankings in auditing, ?nancial, managerial,
and tax are similar to the recent survey studies. The tradi-
tional top-?ve journals (TAR, JAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR) as pre-
sented in the literature may or may not apply to the
different specialties. This is especially clear for the mana-
gerial, tax and systems specialty areas.
Journal rankings by publication outcome and level of
institution
Finally, we reexamine the journal rankings using publi-
cation outcome and accounting program levels. There are
six categories: Dissertations from top 20 programs vs. dis-
sertations from other institutions; published dissertations
Table 8
Journal rankings by publication outcome and level of institution.
Top ?ve journals weighted by research method Top ?ve journals weighted by specialty area
Dissertations from Top 20 programs (N=61) 1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Journal of Management Accounting Research
5. Contemporary Accounting Research
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting Horizons
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Dissertations from other institutions (N=183) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting, Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Auditing A Journal of Practice and Theory
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Published dissertations (N=88) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Accounting, Organizations and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Management Accounting
1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Contemporary Accounting Research
5. Accounting, Organizations and Society
Unpublished dissertations (N=156) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Management Accounting
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
Dissertations from private institutions (N=49) 1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Management Accounting
5. Contemporary Accounting Research
1. Journal of Accounting Research
2. The Accounting Review
3. Accounting, Organizations, and Society
4. Journal of Accounting and Economics
5. Issues in Accounting Education
Dissertations from public institutions (N=195) 1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
1. The Accounting Review
2. Journal of Accounting Research
3. Journal of Accounting and Economics
4. Accounting, Organizations and Society
5. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory
We report the top ?ve accounting journals weighted by research method and specialty area using Top 20 vs. other programs, published vs. unpublished, and
private vs. public institutions.
11
For the systems specialty, we do not make such an adjustment because
very few accounting journals will remain.
K.C. Chan et al. / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 875–885 883
vs. unpublished dissertations; and dissertations from pri-
vate institutions vs. dissertations from public institutions.
To control for the disproportionate number of archival
and ?nancial accounting dissertations, we use the same
weighting scheme as in Tables 3 and 4. For the sake of
brevity, we only present the top ?ve journals in each cate-
gory in Table 8. Except for a few small variations, the top-
four journals (TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE) are very consistent.
Results in Table 8 support our overall dissertation citations
analyses.
12
Summary
We conduct a citation-based journal ranking study in
accounting using dissertations completed during the
1999–2003 period. Besides preserving the merit of using
citations to gauge journal quality, this approach enables
us to mitigate the self-citation bias driven by a dispropor-
tionate large number of ?nancial and archival accounting
dissertations. That said, since our sample consists of
mainly accounting dissertations from US universities, our
results should be interpreted with that caveat in mind,
however.
Two major ?ndings emerge. First, our overall top-four
journals based on the weighted citations per dissertation
are TAR, JAR, AOS, and JAE. The ?fth-ranked journal is BRIA
(based on research method weighting) or Auditing (based
on research specialty weighting). AOS ranks above JAE
while BRIA/Auditing displaces CAR as a top-?ve journal.
Our ranking of accounting journals based on dissertation
citations according to research method and specialty area
augments recent studies in the literature based on surveys.
Interestingly, there is no perfect matching between the
overall top-?ve journals in the literature (i.e., TAR, JAR,
JAE, AOS, and CAR) and the top-?ve journals in any of the
?ve specialty areas (auditing, ?nancial, managerial, sys-
tems and tax). Speci?cally, Auditing is a top-?ve journal
in auditing. AOS and JMAR are top-?ve journals in manage-
rial. In the tax specialty, JATA and NTJ are among the top-
?ve journals.
Our study thus further substantiates the caution in Bon-
ner et al. (2006) about using journal rankings wisely within
our accounting discipline.
Acknowledgements
Helpful comments and suggestions from Professor An-
thony Hopwood (the Editor) and two anonymous review-
ers are gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge
Professor James R. Hasselback for his prompt clari?cation
on the Hasselback Accounting Faculty Directory. We are
responsible for any remaining errors.
Appendix. Abbreviated names for accounting journals
Abbreviated
journal name
Full name
AB Abacus
AY Accountancy
ABR Accounting and Business Research
AF Accounting and Finance
AAAJ Accounting Auditing and
Accountability Journal
AH Accounting Horizons
AOS Accounting Organizations and Society
TAR The Accounting Review
AA Advances in Accounting
AT Advances in Taxation
AUDIT Auditing: A Journal of Practice and
Theory
BRIA Behavioral Research in Accounting
BAR British Accounting Review
CAM CA Magazine
CAR Contemporary Accounting Research
CPAJ CPA Journal
CPOA Critical Perspectives On Accounting
EAR European Accounting Review
IA Internal Auditor
IJA International Journal of Accounting
IAE Issues in Accounting Education
JA Journal of Accountancy
JAE Journal of Accounting and Economics
JAPP Journal of Accounting and Public Policy
JAAF Journal of Accounting Auditing and
Finance
JAED Journal of Accounting Education
JAL Journal of Accounting Literature
JAR Journal of Accounting Research
JBFA Journal of Business Finance and
Accounting
JCM Journal of Cost Management
JIS Journal of Information Systems
JIFMA Journal of International Financial
Management and Accounting
JMAR Journal of Management Accounting
Research
JATA Journal of the American Taxation
Association
MA Management Accounting
MAR Management Accounting Research
NPA National Public Accountant
NTJ National Tax Journal
OCPA Ohio CPA
RAE Research On Accounting Ethics
RAS Review of Accounting Studies
WCPA Woman CPA
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