Accounting Program Research Rankings

Accounting Program Research Rankings byTopical Area and Methodology

Joshua G. Coyne, Scott L. Summers, Brady Williams, and David A. Wood

ABSTRACT: This paper makes two novel contributions to ranking accounting researchprograms constructed from publication counts in top journals �AOS, Auditing, BRIA,CAR, JAE, JAR, JATA, JIS, JMAR, RAST, and TAR�. In contrast to previous studies, werecognize the mobility of intellectual assets tied to the human capital of accountingresearchers, and therefore base our rankings on the researchers’ current affiliationsrather than their affiliations at the time of publication. Also, we categorize each articlewritten by topical area �auditing, financial, managerial, accounting information systems,tax, and other� and by methodology �analytical, archival, experimental, and other� andprovide separate accounting program rankings by topical area and by methodology.These two innovations provide a rich, centralized information resource for decision-makers—both institutional and individual—in choosing how to allocate time, resources,and expertise.

Keywords: accounting research rankings; accounting research methodology; account-ing research topical areas.

Data Availability: Requests for data may be made to the authors.

JEL Classifications: M4; M40; M41; M42; M49.

INTRODUCTION

Some of the most important career decisions made by academic accountants are made in anenvironment that is distinctly lacking in transparent, reliable, and relevant information.Those deciding where to pursue a Ph.D. or seek employment in accounting academia have

traditionally relied on informal inquiries about the reputations of institutions and their faculties, orother measures of quality such as surveys of perceptions and accounting rankings that reduce allaccounting topical and methodological research production into a single ranking number. Giventhat most academic accountants specialize in a particular sub-discipline of accounting, decisionsbased on overarching reputations, broad surveys, and singular rankings suffer from a lack of

Joshua G. Coyne is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina, Scott L. Summers is an AssociateProfessor, Brady Williams is an alumnus, and David A. Wood is an Assistant Professor, all at Brigham YoungUniversity.

We express our thanks to Derek Oler, Mitch Oler, and Chris Skousen for sharing data with us. We thank George Foster, JeffHoopes, Robert Jensen, Steve Kachelmeier, Jagan Krishnan, Jeff McMullin, Eric Press, Kari Olsen, Chad Simon, JasonSmith, Nate Stephens, Stanley Veliotis, and participants at the 2008 BYU Accounting Research Symposium for helpfulcomments and suggestions.

ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION American Accounting AssociationVol. 25, No. 4 DOI: 10.2308/iace.2010.25.4.6312010pp. 631–654

Published Online: November 2010

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specialized, granular information that could better inform decision-makers. We contribute toknowledge in the field of accounting academics by providing granular, quantitative information tothese decision-makers.

We propose a unique design for measuring the intellectual assets held by accounting researchprograms that will enhance the current body of ranking literature in two ways. First, we assumethat the intellectual assets of a researcher stay with that researcher when moving from institutionto institution.1 Second, recognizing specialty areas �both topical and methodological� within theaccounting discipline—a similar concept currently exists in other business school disciplines �e.g.,management�—we report rankings by methodology and topical area that allow institutions to berecognized for their expertise in specialty areas.2

In regards to the second contribution, since the most influential accounting journals publish adisproportionately high number of articles in the financial specialty area �Bonner et al. 2006�,parties interested in expertise in other specialty areas may make sub-optimal decisions by relyingon ratings heavily influenced by the financial accounting specialty. The creation of accountingresearch program rankings by specialty area allows universities to compare and contrast theirprograms with programs that are focusing on the same specialties. It also allows individual aca-demics to recognize pockets of specialty where they might choose to network and it allows futureacademics to evaluate the depth and breadth of research coming from universities where theymight pursue their terminal degree.

These rankings significantly increase the amount of available information that could be usedby multiple decision-makers, including:

Prospective Ph.D. students: Each student or accounting professional that decides to pursue aPh.D. in accounting is immediately faced with the challenge of finding a university withprograms, faculty, and expectations that match the applicant’s needs, wants, and career goals.This decision is often multifaceted and complex. Providing rankings by topical area andmethodology will allow prospective Ph.D. students to better target programs which are bestable to support their research interests.3

Ph.D. graduates: Rankings decomposed by discipline and based on current location of hu-man capital will also benefit Ph.D. candidates as they graduate and enter the job market. Theywill be able to use these rankings to target positions at universities that fit their career goals.This study identifies top programs in each specialty area, which is especially valuable if theseprograms do not register highly in general ranking studies.Research institutions: Accounting department heads, business school administrators, anduniversity leadership may find these results useful in establishing legitimacy—both internaland external. This study recognizes those schools that have been and are making a concerted

1 Crediting a publication to the author’s current institution allows a university’s research ranking to change based on theaddition or loss of a distinguished researcher. Creating rankings in this way measures the impact of the intellectual assets�contributions� of the individual researcher by tying those assets to the present institution rather than ascribing intellec-tual assets to an entity incapable of reasoning—a university.

2 Previous research �cf. Bazley et al. 1975; Andrews and McKenzie 1978; Windall 1981; Zivney and Thomas 1985;Hasselback and Reinstein 1995; Fogarty 1995; Trieschmann et al. 2000; Brown 2003; Chan et al. 2007� has rankedresearch programs, but not by topic—accounting information systems �AIS�/auditing/financial/managerial/tax—ormethodology—archival/analytical/experimental. We note that Brown and Laksmana �2004� break rankings of Ph.D.programs into two categories, financial and nonfinancial.

3 We note from a survey we conducted of 15 �11 respondents� pre-doctoral students invited to an informational doctoralprogram meeting by the IS section of the AAA, all potential doctoral students indicated they would consult topical andmethodological ranking results, if available, when making their decision about which programs to apply to and to attend.Furthermore, they ranked topical and methodological expertise as the most important criteria of factors in decidingwhich programs they would apply to and attend �other factors ranked were financial aid, graduation rates, time tograduate, placement, physical location, and overall rankings�.

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effort to specialize and improve their research reputation. A school that has never placedhighly in general rankings may be able to use these rankings to demonstrate credibility incertain specialty areas or methodologies. This credibility can help justify internal funding formaterials, technology, or additional research, and help attract external funding. Also, theserankings could be used as evidence for accreditation purposes of the research production of aninstitution’s faculty.Professional organizations: In July 2008, the AICPA announced the introduction of a $15million fund designed to send experienced practitioners back to school to get Ph.D.s to helpfill the shortage of audit and tax faculty. This fund, which is made up of donations from manyof the largest accounting firms and many state accounting associations, is designed to sendprofessionals back for audit and tax training in Ph.D. programs. The rankings provided in thispaper will highlight programs that specialize in research related to audit and tax. In this way,the effectiveness of the fund could be enhanced by allowing these individuals to target pro-grams where they will get the best audit- and tax-specific training and by helping fundadministrators to know where to direct additional funds.This paper proceeds as follows. First, we discuss our sample and then methodology. Next, we

present the ranking results with some commentary on how these rankings may be used. Finally, weconclude by discussing the implications of our research and the consequences of design choiceswe made in our study. We note that we include an Appendix discussing a companion website thatprovides additional information that could not be included in the article because of space con-straints.

SAMPLE DESCRIPTIONTo create our rankings, we index all peer-reviewed articles in Accounting, Organizations and

Society �AOS�; Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory �Auditing�; Behavioral Research inAccounting �BRIA�; Contemporary Accounting Research �CAR�; Journal of Accounting & Eco-nomics �JAE�; Journal of Accounting Information Systems �JIS�; Journal of Accounting Research�JAR�; Journal of Management Accounting Research �JMAR�; Journal of the American TaxationAssociation �JATA�; Review of Accounting Studies �RAST�; and The Accounting Review �TAR�.4

We chose these journals because previous research has shown that six of these journals �AOS,CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR� are considered the highest rated accounting journals �cf. Gloveret al. 2006; Bonner et al. 2006; Lowensohn and Samelson 2006�.

Studies have also provided evidence that these journals may not provide representative cov-erage of accounting methodologies and topical areas �Bonner et al. 2006�. Using the results of asurvey of 517 academics from various American Accounting Association �AAA� sections �Lowen-sohn and Samelson 2006�, we selected the journals perceived to be the best by methodology�behavioral� and topical area �tax, managerial, and AIS�.5 By this process we add BRIA, JATA,JMAR, and JIS. We add Auditing to this list as it is regularly considered to be the top journal forpublishing audit research aside from those already mentioned. Including these additional journalsshould provide greater coverage of topical areas and methodologies that are not adequately rep-resented in the traditional top six journals.

Our rankings do not explicitly recognize “top-tier” contributions of researchers in supportingdisciplines �e.g., finance, economics, psychology, etc.�. We made this choice because of our inter-

4 We do not include articles that were invited by the editor or conference discussant papers �such as JAR or CARconference discussion papers� since these articles are not required to go through the peer-review process. Also, weexclude articles written directly to a professional audience and educational cases.

5 Although the survey included the topical areas of government and nonprofit, we do not employ these topics in ourrankings, so we did not include them in the journal selection process.

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area 633


est in identifying top accounting research programs and because of the time-intensive nature ofcreating these rankings. While contributions in the “top-tier” of supporting journals are importantand contribute to the academic prestige of the researcher, we believe they are less relevant toidentifying accounting expertise than an evaluation of research published in accounting journals.6

METHODOLOGYTo create our rankings, we index all articles published in the aforementioned journals between

1990 and 2009 and categorize them based on topic and methodology. Because of the time-intensive nature involved in creating these rankings, we limit our analysis to a 20-year window,which effectively covers three tenure cycles. We note that authors who were prolific researchersbefore 1990 but have not continued to actively research since 1990 likely have fewer currentintellectual research assets to share with colleagues.7

We categorize each article by methodological category: analytical, archival, experimental, orother; however, our methodological categories are not mutually exclusive.8 For example, Hodderet al. �2008� employ an experiment as well as archival tests in their paper. We categorize thisarticle as both archival and experimental for purposes of our rankings. We define our method-ological classifications as follows:

Analytical: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on the act of formally modelingtheories or substantiating ideas in mathematical terms. These studies use analytic devices topredict, explain, or give substance to theory.Archival: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on objective data collected fromrepositories. Also included are studies in which the researchers, or another third party, col-lected the research data and in which the data have objective amounts such as net income,sales, fees, etc. �i.e., the researcher creates an objective repository of data�.Experimental: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on data the researchergathered by administering treatments to subjects. Usually these studies employ random as-signment; however, if the researcher selected different populations in an attempt to “manipu-late” a variable �e.g., participants of different experience levels were selected for participa-tion�, we also consider these experimental in nature.Other: studies that did not fit into one of the other methodological categories. The method-ologies in these studies vary significantly and include such things as surveys, case studies,field studies, simulations, persuasive arguments, etc.Similar to our categorization by methodology, our categorization by topical area allows for

multiple categories per article. If an article sheds light on multiple topical areas, it is categorizedas providing a contribution to each area �e.g., Prawitt et al. �2009� examine how internal auditquality �audit� impacts earnings management �financial��. In categorizing articles by topical area,we employ the following definitions:

AIS: studies which address issues related to the systems and the users of systems that collect,store, and generate accounting information. Users are defined broadly to include those in-

6 Glover et al. �2006� examine the publication records of faculty promoted at the top 75 research schools. In unreportedanalyses, the correlation between publishing in the top three accounting journals �TAR, JAR, and JAE� and publishing inother top business journals is 0.86 when considered at the school portfolio level. This suggests that while our results willnot provide a complete picture of the articles published by accounting scholars, they are unlikely to be biased byexcluding articles published in other top business journals.

7 We explore the importance of currency in more depth later in the paper.8 Although the decision to allow for multiple methodological and/or topical categorizations per article causes some

articles to be counted in multiple rankings, we argue that this more accurately captures the authors’ potential tocontribute in multiple areas.



volved in collection, storage, or use of accounting information, or even the implementation ofthe system. These systems may be electronic or not. Research streams include, but are notlimited to, design science, ontological investigations, expert systems, decision aides, supportsystems, processing assurance, security, controls, system usability, and system performance.Auditing: studies in which the topical content involves an audit topic. These studies varywidely and include, but are not limited to, the study of the audit environment—external andinternal, auditor decision-making, auditor independence, the effects of auditing on the finan-cial reporting process, and auditor fees.Financial: studies that address the topical content of financial accounting, financial markets,and decision-making based on financial accounting information.Managerial: studies that examine issues regarding budgeting, compensation, decision-making within an enterprise, incentives, and the allocation of resources within an enterprise.Tax: studies that examine issues related to taxpayer decision-making, tax allocations, taxcomputations, structuring of accounting transactions to meet tax goals, tax incentives, ormarket reactions to tax disclosures.Other: studies that do not fit into one of the other topical areas. The topical areas in thesestudies vary significantly and include such things as education, methodologies, law, psychol-ogy, history, the accounting profession, work environment, etc.We use data previously categorized by Oler et al. �2009� as a starting point for categorizing

articles appearing in AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR journals. For this data, one of theauthors on this project reviewed each article categorization made by the Oler et al. �2009� teamand made changes as deemed appropriate to fit our categorization scheme. For the other journals,two of the authors on this project categorized each article. All discrepancies in ratings wereresolved through discussion.

After categorizing each article, we identified the author’s current school affiliation by firstsearching in the 2008 Hasselback directory �Hasselback 2008�. We then visited the website of theuniversity listed in the Hasselback directory and verified that the professor was listed as beingemployed at the institution �this and the article listings were last updated in December 2009�. Ifthe author was not listed in the Hasselback directory, or if we could not find them on the websiteof the institution listed by the Hasselback directory, we searched the Internet for the author andrecorded the author’s current university affiliation.9 If professors were listed as holding jointappointments or were listed as visiting scholars, we credited the “home” school for those publi-cations. We created initial rankings after performing this step; subsequently, for all schools thatwere listed in the top 50 of any of these initial rankings, we revisited the school’s faculty website,verified that the authors listed belong to that school, and searched for any professors listed on theschool website that had not been categorized in our database. If we could not find a professor’saffiliation after performing all these steps, we considered that professor to be no longer employedin academia and, therefore, we gave no credit to any institution for that individual’s research.10

To create our rankings, we gave each author full credit for each article published in thesejournals �i.e., for coauthored papers, all institutions of the authors received credit for the publica-tion, and if multiple authors were from the same institution, the institution received credit for each

9 To conduct our Internet search, we searched for the researcher’s name or their name and special key words �e.g.,accounting, university�. If we found initial evidence of a professor at a university �e.g., a paper listed on SSRN�, we thenvisited that university website to verify the faculty member was employed at the school. If we could not locate aprofessor on a university’s directory, they were not included in this study.

10 We gave credit to a school for authors outside of accounting departments yet who publish in accounting journals, if wecould locate them in their current school affiliation web directory as described in the text.



author�.11 We then summed the number of total publications for each school by methodology andby topical area. Finally, we ranked schools by the total productivity of the faculty currently at thatschool.12

We take four additional steps to maximize the usefulness of this data. First, for all rankings weprovide the number of distinct professors that contribute to each ranking. Given our methodology,schools that have larger faculties are more likely to be ranked higher because they employ moreindividuals who have the possibility of publishing articles. However, we do not scale our rankingsby faculty size for several reasons.

First, our objective is ranking the intellectual assets available at institutions rather than rank-ing the average productivity of faculty. Further, choosing to scale by faculty size is problematicdue to the difficult nature of determining faculty size, especially in specialty areas. Several pos-sible ways to scale the data by size include scaling by the size of the department, number ofauthors who published the articles, or the number of professors who research in an area �or usethat methodology�. We noticed as we categorized articles that many schools do not have a separateaccounting department or combine the accounting department with finance, information systems,or the entire business school. In addition, many accounting academics work in administrativepositions, making it difficult to choose whether to include them “in” the department. These prob-lems make scaling by the count of faculty in the department problematic and subjective. Scalingby the number of authors who published articles in this index is problematic in that one personcould publish a high number of articles and therefore cause that school to score very highly despitebeing the only active researcher at the institution. We do not believe this type of ranking would beof greatest usefulness to the accounting academy. Finally, scaling by the number of professors whoresearch in an area is problematic because many researchers research in multiple methodologiesand there is no clear way to count the number of professors working in a particular area.

The second step we take to make the data useful is to provide three types of consolidatedrankings: by topical area, by methodology, and by both topical area and methodology. This con-solidation allows for a discussion of which institutions are well versed or well rounded in allspecialty areas. The consolidated rankings are created by averaging the topical area rankings, themethodology rankings, or both. This is in contrast to consolidated rankings based on total publi-cation counts. Rankings based on total publications introduce weighting problems as some areasare disproportionately represented in journals �Bonner et al. 2006�. These rankings recognizeschools that are able to do well in all or virtually all methodological and topical areas and arelikely of special interest to prospective Ph.D. students who may not know exactly what they willwant to research and would like to go to a school that supports broad topical areas and/or broadmethodologies.

The third step we take is to report rankings based on three different time windows—thefull-time window �20 years�, the previous 12 years, and the previous six years. Providing rankingsof shorter windows allows users to infer various trends. For example, if a school is very highlyranked in the full-time window but not in the previous six-year window, it may suggest that theschool employs an aging faculty who are winding down their research careers. Conversely, aschool that is ranked very highly in the six-year window but not in the full window may havepromising young scholars who are highly productive but have not been employed a sufficientlength of time to produce a tremendous quantity of research.

11 We chose to give each author full credit because we view each author as likely to have increased their intellectual assetsby working on the project. We also did not want to introduce noise or bias by attempting to create a subjective weightingscheme of the value of different journal articles. If high quality outcome data become available in the future for whichreliable and theoretically justified weightings could be created, then future researchers should reexamine these rankingsusing those weights. However, to our knowledge, we are unaware of a high quality weighting based on empirical data.

12 If we discovered that a professor had retired, was emeritus, or had died, we did not include them in the rankings.



Finally, we create a website with additional functionality to increase the usefulness of therankings �see the Appendix for additional discussion of the website�.

RESULTSTable 1 presents descriptive statistics of the sample. Panel A shows the percentage of articles

by topical area for each different journal. It is apparent that journals have very different tastes interms of topics of articles published. Of the traditional Big 3 accounting journals �TAR, JAR, andJAE�, TAR publishes the broadest topical scope of articles. AOS and BRIA are the only non-specialty-topic journals that publish a higher percentage of articles in an area other than financial�AOS publishes more managerial than any other topical area and BRIA publishes more “other”research and auditing than any other topical area�. Also of note is the almost complete lack ofpublication of AIS research in any journal other than JIS. We note that Table 1 does not considerthe quantity of different types of articles submitted to the journals; therefore, we cannot concludefrom this table that there is an editorial or reviewer bias against certain topical areas ormethodologies.13

Panel B shows the percentage of articles by methodology for each different journal. With theexception of AOS, BRIA, JIS, and JMAR, archival research is the dominant methodology pub-lished. BRIA publishes a higher percentage of experimental research than other methodologies,and JIS, JMAR, and AOS publish a higher percentage of “other” methodologies than analytical,archival, or experimental. Although these descriptive statistics provide evidence that all researchmethodologies can be published somewhere, it also shows that specific journals may have definedmethodological and/or topical area tastes in terms of research they have published in the past.

Panel C of Table 1 shows the percentage of articles by methodology for each topical area.Managerial research has the greatest distribution of methodologies as each methodology is used atleast 16 percent of the time in managerial publications. Financial has the least distribution ofmethodologies as archival is used 76 percent of the time, and the next highest used methodologyis analytical, used 12 percent of the time. Audit research uses a relatively equal blend of archival,experimental, and other methodologies, but lags behind in employing the analytical methodology.Tax is reasonably diverse in terms of methodology as the lowest methodology, “other” is used in10 percent of publications. Finally, AIS uses primarily experimental and “other” methodologies toaddress research questions.

Table 2 presents rankings based on raw total counts of total articles published. This ranking iscomparable to most previous accounting program rankings. The particular institutions that rankhighly in this ranking are similar to past studies—which provides some face validity to themethodology we employ as the results are consistent with past studies. However, one can see howour decision to only credit an institution for faculty currently at the institution influences rankings.For example, the University of Michigan has traditionally been one of the top producers ofaccounting research; however, in our rankings they appear as only the 18th ranked school in thelast six years. This is largely due to the loss of key researchers in recent years. Although givingcredit to an institution for faculty currently at the institution produces some changes in rankings,the main contribution of this paper is to provide evidence of expertise in particular accountingresearch topical areas and methodologies, which we do in subsequent tables. By including the total

13 As an example of the importance of considering the rate of submission before determining bias, the ContemporaryAccounting Research �2007� Editor’s Report reveals that only five of 258 submissions to the journal were in the area oftax. Thus, even if CAR published all of these articles, it would still show a low percentage of published tax studies ina presentation similar to Table 1. Thus, the results in Table 1 do not necessarily suggest editor/reviewer bias, but may beexplained by unknown submission rates to the journals.



TABLE 1

Descriptive Statistics

Panel A: Percentage of Articles by Topical Area Published in Different JournalsJournal AIS Audit Financial Managerial Tax Other

AOS 1% 13% 16% 39% 2% 33%Auditing 3% 97% 19% 1% 0% 13%BRIA 1% 35% 13% 19% 5% 37%CAR 1% 28% 54% 15% 8% 12%JAE 0% 6% 78% 16% 8% 5%JAR 1% 18% 70% 13% 7% 3%JIS 100% 18% 10% 5% 0% 0%JMAR 0% 1% 1% 98% 1% 3%JATA 0% 1% 28% 4% 96% 7%RAST 0% 6% 79% 16% 4% 0%TAR 1% 21% 58% 18% 10% 6%

Panel B: Percentage of Articles by Methodology Published in Different JournalsJournal Analytical Archival Experimental Other

AOS 1% 10% 13% 77%Auditing 3% 38% 33% 30%BRIA 2% 1% 59% 38%CAR 20% 52% 18% 12%JAE 13% 83% 1% 3%JAR 21% 64% 13% 3%JIS 3% 12% 39% 47%JMAR 19% 16% 16% 51%JATA 14% 53% 21% 18%RAST 36% 62% 3% 0%TAR 14% 63% 21% 4%

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Panel C: Percentage of Articles by Methodology per Topical AreaTopical Area Analytical Archival Experimental Other

AIS 4% 12% 36% 48%Audit 8% 32% 38% 23%Financial 12% 76% 7% 5%Managerial 22% 22% 16% 40%Tax 13% 58% 19% 10%Other 4% 22% 16% 59%

Panel A and Panel B percentages do not add up to 100 percent as topical area and methodology categorizations are not mutually exclusive �e.g., an article can be both financial andaudit or use both experimental and archival methodologies�.

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TABLE 2

Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Raw Total Article Counts

University

Total

6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Stanford 1 #13 1 #14 1 #16Tx-Austin 2 #16 4 #21 3 #25Chicago 2 #19 6 #22 9 #26U of Washington 4 #10 4 #12 7 #18So Calif 5 #13 6 #20 2 #24Texas A&M 5 #12 9 #16 8 #23Penn 7 #13 2 #17 4 #18Michigan St 7 #13 3 #19 6 #27Duke 7 #12 11 #14 21 #15Illinois at Urb. Cham. 7 #18 12 #21 18 #24Indiana Bloomington 11 #14 8 #17 9 #22Arizona 12 #14 17 #16 20 #17MIT 12 #10 25 #13 36 #13Penn St 14 #12 10 #14 12 #16Cornell 14 #8 14 #11 14 #13New York U 16 #12 19 #15 15 #16Iowa 16 #13 27 #14 23 #17Michigan 18 #11 14 #15 21 #16Ohio St 19 #12 14 #17 13 #23Missouri 19 #10 25 #12 41 #13Toronto 19 #11 29 #11 29 #16Fla Internat 22 #7 34 #9 55 #9CUNY-Baruch 22 #13 35 #18 29 #23London Bus 22 #6 52 #9 55 #10No Carol 25 #9 13 #10 11 #12Wisconsin 25 #10 17 #15 15 #16Columbia 25 #10 21 #14 19 #14Ariz St 25 #11 23 #18 4 #25UCLA 25 #7 27 #8 25 #11Northwestern 30 #11 23 #13 17 #20Alberta 30 #10 35 #15 36 #16So Carol 30 #10 43 #11 53 #12Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 30 #7 48 #10 67 #11Berkeley 34 #7 30 #7 27 #10Utah 34 #9 39 #12 51 #12Brigham Young U 36 #9 19 #17 24 #19Bentley 36 #7 22 #9 33 #9Nanyang Tech 36 #7 41 #10 67 #10Florida St 36 #10 45 #13 53 #16Georgia St 36 #9 48 #11 39 #15

Rankings for the top 40 schools based on the six-year window are presented. The number of authors who contributed to therankings are also presented �i.e., number after #�. If there were ties at the cutoff amount, the school that is presented wasthe highest in the 12-year category or if still a tie, then the “All” year category �or if still a tie, alphabetically�. Timewindows represent all articles published in the previous 6, 12, or 19 years.



rankings in Table 2, one can compare topical and methodological rankings to this table to get someidea of how well the overall rankings represent each individual topical and methodological arearanking.

Table 3 presents the rankings of universities broken down by topical area. We list the top 40schools for each topical area and present three rankings: rankings over the previous six, 12, orfull-year range �rankings are sorted by the six-year column�. We list each topical area alphabeti-cally.

There are several interesting things to note from the rankings other than just the rank orderingof the universities. The trend of universities’ rankings from six years to 20 years is valuableinformation. For example, a school like Florida International in the audit rankings is ranked firstover the six-year window but eighth over the 20-year window. This suggests that Florida Interna-tional has been very active in the recent past and is the top producer of audit research in the lastsix years.

Analyzing the trends of publications also reveals interesting findings when looking at anentire topical area’s rankings. For example, the top ten schools in financial over the six-yearwindow were all in the top 25 over the full-year window. In Managerial and Auditing, four andthree schools in the top 10 during the six-year window were not in the top 25 schools over thefull-year window. This suggests that there is significant change in rankings for some topical areasrelative to the other topical areas.

These rankings are also useful to non-U.S. schools. Note in the managerial rankings that tenof the top 40 schools in the six-year window are international schools. In the audit rankings, 11 ofthe top 40 schools are international schools. These rankings help to give credibility to theseinstitutions in terms of their ability to produce top quality research in given topical areas. Also ofinterest in these rankings is the number of faculty whose published articles have contributed to agiven ranking. For example, in the managerial rankings, Stanford is rated first over the full-yearrange even though only five different authors published managerial articles. The second rankeduniversity, Michigan State, has twice as many authors. This information could be used by potentialPh.D. students �current doctoral students� in targeting which school to attend �work for�. WhereasStanford appears to have fewer researchers publishing managerial research, these researchers arepublishing a very high volume of articles. Michigan State, the second ranked school, has moreresearchers, but they do not appear to be producing at a rate as fast as Stanford.

Table 4 is very similar to Table 3 except Table 4 presents rankings by research methodologyrather than by topical area. We note that users may benefit from interpreting Table 4 in similarfashion to the way we discussed interpreting Table 3.

Table 5 presents three different rankings that provide information about which schools pro-vide the greatest breadth of research expertise. In Table 4 we provide the results of averaging thetopical area rankings, averaging the methodology rankings, or averaging the topical area andmethodology rankings. Schools that focus on one or two topical areas or on a single methodologywill not rank as highly in these rankings.

As would be expected, large schools fare particularly well in the “breadth” rankings. Theseschools likely have great breadth because their size allows professors to specialize their teachingand thus their research in areas other than financial accounting. As with Table 2–4, we providerankings over different time horizons so users can make informed decisions using these rankings.

CONCLUSIONSThis study ranks all accounting research programs by considering publication counts in top

accounting journals. These rankings differ from most prior rankings in two important ways. First,we provide separate research rankings by topical area �AIS, auditing, financial, managerial, andtax� and by methodology �analytical, archival, and experimental�. Second, we give institutions



TABLE 3

Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Topical Area

Panel A: AISUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Rutgers 1 #3 2 #4 2 #5Florida St 1 #2 9 #2 9 #3No Carol St 3 #3 10 #3 19 #3Cen Fla 4 #2 4 #2 4 #3So Illinois 4 #3 4 #4 5 #6Tx Tech 4 #3 6 #4 8 #4Portland St 4 #3 10 #3 9 #4Cal St Long Bch 4 #1 10 #2 19 #2No Arizona 4 #2 17 #2 14 #2Auburn 4 #2 17 #2 19 #3Tulsa 4 #3 17 #3 28 #3Ghent U 4 #3 17 #3 28 #3Bentley 13 #2 1 #4 1 #4Ariz St 13 #1 6 #3 3 #5Michigan St 13 #2 10 #2 9 #3Texas A&M 13 #1 10 #1 14 #2Georgia St 13 #2 10 #3 14 #3Arkansas 13 #1 10 #1 19 #1Okla St 13 #1 26 #1 19 #2Tennessee 13 #2 26 #2 28 #3Houston-Cl L 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2No Colo 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2Emory 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1Maastricht 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2Akron 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1Kent St 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2Hawaii-Manoa 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1Queensland 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2Missouri 29 #1 3 #3 5 #3So Florida 29 #1 6 #4 7 #4Kansas 29 #1 17 #3 19 #4Virg Comm 29 #1 17 #2 28 #2Delaware 29 #1 26 #1 40 #1Temple 29 #1 26 #2 40 #2Utah 29 #1 47 #1 14 #1Iowa State 29 #1 47 #1 28 #1Denver U 29 #1 47 #1 28 #3Brock U 29 #1 47 #1 40 #2Cal St Northridge 29 #1 47 #1 40 #1Fla Atlantic 29 #1 47 #1 68 #1

Panel B: AuditUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Fla Internat 1 #4 2 #5 8 #5Illinois at Urb. Cham. 2 #9 5 #11 4 #13




Panel B: AuditUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Northeastern 3 #6 3 #6 3 #6Rutgers 4 #6 11 #7 15 #9Bentley 5 #5 4 #6 6 #6New So Wales 5 #6 6 #10 9 #11Missouri 5 #2 7 #2 15 #2Nanyang Tech 8 #4 7 #6 15 #6Texas A&M 9 #3 16 #4 10 #9Kentucky 9 #3 21 #3 15 #4Queens 9 #4 24 #5 39 #5Fla Atlantic 9 #6 36 #7 32 #9Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 9 #2 36 #2 50 #3Brigham Young U 14 #4 7 #8 13 #8Tennessee 14 #5 7 #5 13 #5Tx-Austin 14 #3 13 #6 2 #10Indiana Indianapolis 14 #2 14 #4 20 #5Hong Kong PolyTechnic U 14 #4 14 #7 24 #7Temple 14 #3 21 #4 34 #4So Carol 14 #4 24 #4 39 #5Wisconsin 21 #3 1 #6 5 #9Alabama 21 #3 12 #4 24 #4Kansas 21 #3 16 #4 24 #4So Calif 21 #4 19 #6 6 #9Florida 21 #2 19 #4 10 #5Alberta 21 #3 30 #4 34 #6Mass 21 #3 30 #3 50 #3Georgia 21 #4 36 #4 29 #5Auckland 21 #4 50 #4 81 #4Athens 21 #4 59 #4 100 #4Georgia St 31 #4 24 #5 15 #6Indiana Bloomington 31 #3 24 #5 34 #8Toronto 31 #2 30 #2 29 #5Virginia Tech 31 #2 30 #4 44 #5Chinese HK U 31 #2 30 #5 50 #5Auburn 31 #3 42 #3 58 #5No Texas 31 #3 50 #3 44 #6Nat Taiwan U 31 #4 50 #4 68 #5Cornell 31 #2 59 #2 12 #3SUNY-Bingham 31 #3 59 #4 100 #4

Panel C: FinancialUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Chicago 1 #18 3 #19 5 #21U of Washington 2 #10 1 #12 1 #18Stanford 3 #13 2 #14 2 #15Tx-Austin 4 #13 5 #18 5 #20Duke 4 #10 7 #10 10 #10MIT 6 #10 13 #13 15 #13Penn 7 #11 4 #15 3 #17New York U 8 #11 6 #14 4 #15




Panel C: FinancialUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Penn St 9 #9 9 #11 11 #12So Calif 9 #9 12 #15 8 #19Texas A&M 9 #9 14 #12 9 #15Iowa 9 #11 20 #11 24 #13Arizona 9 #10 20 #11 24 #13London Bus 14 #6 29 #8 31 #8Cornell 15 #6 8 #9 16 #9Indiana Bloomington 16 #10 15 #13 13 #16No Carol 17 #9 10 #10 7 #11Northwestern 17 #10 10 #12 11 #12Michigan 17 #9 17 #11 16 #14Toronto 17 #8 23 #9 27 #11CUNY-Baruch 17 #11 25 #15 21 #22Illinois at Urb. Cham. 17 #8 31 #9 32 #13Ohio St 23 #9 15 #15 19 #17Rochester 23 #7 41 #7 36 #9Columbia 25 #8 19 #11 14 #11Wisconsin 25 #6 35 #9 34 #9Utah 27 #6 30 #8 41 #8Missouri 27 #8 37 #9 45 #10UCLA 29 #5 17 #7 18 #9Michigan St 29 #7 22 #12 26 #17Ariz St 29 #7 32 #9 20 #15Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 29 #7 32 #10 39 #11Harvard 33 #8 23 #14 29 #17Berkeley 33 #6 25 #6 21 #7Yale 33 #4 37 #5 44 #5Lancaster 33 #8 47 #8 60 #8Miami 33 #5 48 #5 64 #5Minnesota 38 #6 32 #8 32 #9Houston 38 #7 37 #9 34 #10Georgia 40 #5 28 #9 28 #10

Panel D: ManagerialUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Stanford 1 #5 2 #5 1 #5Michigan St 2 #6 1 #9 2 #10London SchEcon 3 #5 5 #8 7 #10Ohio St 4 #4 5 #7 4 #10Tilburg U 4 #5 13 #6 29 #6UCLA 4 #5 17 #5 27 #6Indiana Bloomington 7 #5 4 #6 7 #6Berkeley 7 #4 10 #5 10 #7Pittsburgh 7 #4 13 #6 17 #6Tx-Austin 7 #6 20 #7 37 #7University of Navarra IES 7 #2 20 #2 40 #2Michigan 12 #4 5 #6 11 #6So Carol 13 #5 29 #6 46 #6So Calif 14 #4 8 #8 4 #8




Panel D: ManagerialUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Melbourne 14 #3 10 #4 7 #7Rice 14 #1 12 #2 21 #2Temple 14 #2 13 #3 6 #4Penn St 14 #4 17 #7 21 #9Miami 14 #4 17 #4 29 #5Monash U 14 #1 20 #2 14 #3Illinois at Urb. Cham. 14 #4 26 #6 37 #8Emory 14 #2 26 #3 40 #4Duke 14 #2 29 #4 29 #5Georgia St 14 #2 29 #4 46 #5Car Mellon 14 #3 37 #3 20 #7Yale 14 #1 37 #3 40 #4Maastricht 14 #2 37 #2 55 #3Leuven 14 #3 37 #3 63 #3Louisiana Tech 14 #3 51 #3 78 #3MIT 14 #3 51 #3 78 #3Twente 14 #2 62 #2 95 #2Miss St 14 #2 62 #2 95 #2Penn 33 #2 3 #7 3 #9Columbia 33 #1 8 #4 14 #4Manchester 33 #2 20 #7 21 #9Iowa 33 #2 29 #3 12 #5Queens 33 #2 29 #3 21 #6Utah 33 #3 29 #4 46 #4Chicago 33 #3 37 #5 37 #5Warwick 33 #1 37 #3 40 #3

Panel E: TaxUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Arizona 1 #3 1 #3 2 #3Dartmouth 2 #2 5 #2 5 #2Chicago 3 #3 6 #4 6 #5Iowa 3 #3 8 #3 16 #4Texas A&M 5 #2 2 #8 4 #9Tx-Austin 5 #2 4 #3 2 #5Oregon 5 #2 10 #4 11 #4Georgia 8 #2 11 #3 16 #3Geo Mason 8 #2 11 #4 24 #4So Carol 8 #2 19 #2 24 #4U of Washington 8 #1 19 #1 24 #2Michigan 8 #1 19 #1 34 #2Missouri 8 #4 34 #4 53 #4No Carol 14 #2 2 #5 1 #6Brigham Young U 14 #3 7 #6 9 #6Conn 14 #3 8 #3 8 #3Columbia 14 #2 11 #7 21 #7Virginia Tech 14 #3 14 #3 14 #3Tx Tech 14 #3 15 #4 16 #5Lingnan U 14 #3 15 #3 29 #3




Panel E: TaxUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Notre Dame 14 #2 19 #2 29 #3Alabama 14 #1 19 #2 34 #3Indiana Bloomington 14 #2 28 #4 14 #8Virg-Grad 14 #2 28 #2 46 #2Idaho State 14 #1 34 #1 40 #1Kansas 14 #3 34 #3 46 #4Laval 14 #3 34 #3 53 #3Cen Fla 28 #1 15 #4 34 #4Michigan St 28 #2 19 #4 9 #8Houston 28 #1 19 #1 16 #3Florida St 28 #2 28 #3 40 #4Rochester 28 #1 34 #2 53 #2Arkansas 28 #2 34 #4 53 #4Cal Davis 28 #1 34 #1 53 #1Ariz St 28 #2 44 #3 13 #7No Texas 28 #2 44 #2 65 #2Tilburg U 28 #1 44 #1 65 #1Pittsburgh 28 #2 58 #2 53 #2Wyoming 28 #2 58 #2 84 #2Miami 28 #1 58 #1 84 #1




TABLE 4

Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Research Methodology

Panel A: AnalyticalUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Stanford 1 #4 1 #5 1 #7Ohio St 2 #3 2 #5 4 #5Berkeley 2 #4 4 #4 10 #5Dartmouth 4 #3 5 #3 8 #3UCLA 4 #4 6 #5 6 #6Yale 4 #1 13 #2 13 #4Car Mellon 7 #3 9 #4 11 #5Minnesota 7 #3 10 #4 6 #7Indiana Indianapolis 7 #2 10 #3 15 #3Houston 7 #5 12 #5 8 #5Illinois at Urb. Cham. 7 #4 13 #4 18 #5Columbia 12 #2 2 #5 5 #6Penn 12 #4 6 #4 2 #4Northwestern 12 #2 6 #4 2 #6Chicago 12 #4 16 #4 27 #5Tilburg U 12 #2 16 #3 32 #3British Colu 17 #4 23 #5 38 #5Duke 17 #3 23 #3 39 #3Tel Aviv Un 17 #1 34 #1 46 #1Ariz St 20 #1 13 #3 11 #5Purdue West Lafayette 20 #3 23 #4 27 #4Tx-Austin 20 #2 28 #2 32 #2Georgetown 20 #1 37 #1 58 #1Florida 24 #2 16 #2 15 #2Illinois at Chicago 24 #2 16 #4 20 #6Penn St 24 #2 16 #2 22 #3Michigan 24 #2 23 #4 14 #6Toronto 24 #2 28 #2 20 #6New York U 24 #2 28 #4 32 #4Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 24 #2 28 #3 43 #3CUNY-Baruch 24 #2 34 #2 24 #3Pittsburgh 24 #2 37 #2 27 #3Alberta 24 #1 37 #2 39 #2Princeton 24 #1 37 #2 58 #2Utah 24 #2 49 #2 46 #2Nat Taiwan U 24 #2 49 #2 66 #2Clark U 24 #1 49 #1 66 #1Fla Atlantic 24 #2 49 #2 66 #2Aarhus Universitet 39 #1 21 #2 27 #2Sungkyunkwan University 39 #1 21 #1 32 #1

Panel B: ArchivalUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Chicago 1 #15 3 #16 3 #19MIT 2 #10 15 #12 14 #12




Panel B: ArchivalUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Stanford 3 #11 1 #12 1 #13Penn 3 #10 2 #14 7 #16U of Washington 3 #7 4 #10 4 #15Texas A&M 3 #12 5 #15 5 #18Duke 3 #10 6 #10 10 #10Arizona 3 #11 13 #12 13 #15So Calif 9 #11 8 #13 5 #17Iowa 10 #13 16 #13 17 #13New York U 11 #11 10 #15 8 #15Penn St 12 #9 10 #13 10 #14London Bus 13 #5 34 #6 38 #6No Carol 14 #9 6 #10 2 #12Michigan 14 #9 12 #13 16 #14Tx-Austin 14 #9 14 #12 12 #13CUNY-Baruch 14 #12 23 #15 19 #22Michigan St 18 #9 9 #16 9 #20Fla Internat 18 #6 20 #8 34 #8Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 18 #7 31 #9 37 #10Indiana Bloomington 21 #10 18 #12 22 #13Toronto 21 #9 22 #9 26 #9Missouri 21 #8 23 #10 34 #11Rochester 24 #7 37 #7 39 #9Wisconsin 25 #7 17 #12 21 #13Utah 26 #7 27 #9 41 #9Temple 27 #7 18 #10 17 #11Harvard 27 #10 20 #17 25 #19Columbia 27 #7 25 #9 22 #10Ohio St 27 #9 30 #11 34 #12Northwestern 31 #8 25 #10 28 #11UCLA 31 #5 27 #6 28 #8Miami 31 #6 37 #6 60 #6So Methodist 34 #7 36 #9 28 #12Georgia 35 #6 31 #9 20 #10Tx-Dallas 35 #6 31 #12 27 #12Berkeley 35 #4 35 #5 24 #6Hong Kong PolyTechnic U 35 #6 37 #9 50 #10Illinois at Urb. Cham. 35 #7 59 #8 50 #11Geo Wash 40 #7 51 #9 41 #12

Panel C: ExperimentalUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Tx-Austin 1 #6 3 #10 1 #12Cornell 1 #5 5 #5 3 #6Indiana Bloomington 3 #6 2 #8 4 #10Northeastern 3 #7 3 #8 5 #8Illinois at Urb. Cham. 5 #6 6 #12 7 #13Michigan St 5 #6 8 #6 8 #7So Carol 5 #5 11 #5 9 #6Brigham Young U 8 #6 1 #11 6 #11




Panel C: ExperimentalUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Alabama 8 #4 7 #5 12 #5Nanyang Tech 10 #4 8 #6 14 #6Ariz St 10 #4 11 #8 2 #10Emory 10 #5 13 #6 23 #6Georgia St 13 #6 16 #6 19 #7U of Washington 14 #3 13 #5 12 #7Bentley 15 #2 10 #3 9 #4Florida St 15 #4 22 #7 30 #7Kansas 15 #3 22 #3 34 #3Texas A&M 15 #2 26 #3 29 #6Kentucky 19 #3 16 #4 9 #6Mass 19 #3 18 #4 27 #4So Illinois 19 #3 26 #4 33 #4Georgia Tech 19 #3 31 #4 27 #4Auburn 19 #3 33 #3 47 #4Cen Fla 24 #3 15 #4 21 #7Pittsburgh 24 #4 26 #4 15 #5Georgia 24 #4 36 #5 43 #5Leuven 24 #3 36 #3 58 #3York U �Canada� 24 #3 36 #3 58 #3Tilburg U 24 #2 45 #2 67 #2New So Wales 30 #1 19 #6 16 #7Oklahoma 30 #2 19 #6 16 #6Wisconsin 30 #3 19 #6 16 #7Virginia Tech 30 #2 22 #4 25 #5Tx Tech 30 #3 22 #5 31 #5Melbourne 30 #1 26 #3 36 #3Missouri 30 #2 26 #3 36 #3So Florida 30 #3 36 #5 47 #6Iowa State 30 #2 55 #3 34 #6No Carol St 30 #3 55 #3 36 #7Louisiana Tech 30 #1 55 #1 67 #2




TABLE 5

Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Averaging Rankings of Topical Areas, ResearchMethodologies, or Topic and Methodology Combined

Panel A: Average of TopicUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Texas A&M 1 #3 1 #5 1 #6Tx-Austin 2 #5 4 #6 4 #7Michigan St 3 #4 2 #5 3 #6Indiana Bloomington 4 #4 6 #5 8 #6So Calif 5 #4 3 #5 2 #6Stanford 6 #4 14 #4 15 #5So Carol 7 #3 5 #4 7 #4Missouri 8 #3 7 #4 9 #4Georgia St 9 #3 10 #3 11 #4Iowa 10 #3 17 #4 20 #4Emory 11 #3 9 #3 13 #4Illinois at Urb. Cham. 12 #4 8 #5 6 #6Michigan 13 #3 13 #4 17 #4Chicago 13 #5 18 #6 24 #6U of Washington 15 #3 15 #4 16 #5Temple 16 #2 11 #3 10 #3Ariz St 17 #3 12 #4 5 #5MIT 18 #3 28 #3 47 #4Utah 19 #2 21 #3 19 #3Miami 20 #2 30 #2 52 #2Fla Internat 20 #2 39 #2 58 #2Arizona 22 #3 23 #4 22 #4Cornell 23 #2 37 #2 34 #3Penn 24 #3 22 #4 21 #5Toronto 24 #3 29 #3 26 #3No Carol 26 #3 24 #3 28 #4Penn St 27 #3 19 #4 18 #5Wisconsin 28 #2 16 #3 12 #4Richmond 29 #2 45 #2 64 #2Hong Kong PolyTechnic U 30 #2 43 #3 43 #4Laval 30 #2 54 #2 63 #2Ohio St 32 #3 20 #4 14 #5Rice 33 #1 41 #2 54 #2Queens 34 #2 31 #2 37 #3Pittsburgh 35 #2 42 #2 39 #3Oklahoma 36 #1 25 #2 23 #2Duke 37 #3 32 #3 36 #4Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 38 #2 52 #2 59 #3Alabama 39 #1 33 #2 40 #3Melbourne 40 #2 35 #2 32 #3

Panel B: Average of MethodUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Tx-Austin 1 #6 1 #7 1 #8




Panel B: Average of MethodUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Illinois at Urb. Cham. 2 #6 2 #7 2 #8U of Washington 3 #4 3 #4 2 #6Pittsburgh 4 #4 7 #4 12 #4Ariz St 5 #4 5 #5 4 #7Texas A&M 6 #5 14 #5 20 #6Wisconsin 7 #4 6 #5 6 #6Ohio St 8 #4 4 #5 5 #6Michigan St 9 #5 9 #6 9 #7Indiana Bloomington 10 #5 10 #6 8 #7Florida 11 #2 10 #2 10 #3Alberta 11 #4 12 #4 13 #5Arizona 13 #4 19 #4 18 #5Missouri 14 #3 13 #4 14 #4Stanford 15 #5 28 #5 42 #6Florida St 16 #3 16 #4 16 #5Cornell 16 #3 20 #4 17 #4Georgia 18 #3 27 #4 39 #4Chicago 19 #6 17 #7 23 #7Miami 20 #3 32 #3 52 #3Brigham Young U 21 #4 24 #5 34 #6Penn 21 #5 32 #5 46 #6Hong Kong PolyTechnic U 23 #3 38 #4 33 #4Duke 24 #4 14 #5 11 #5Georgia St 24 #3 21 #4 21 #4Tilburg U 26 #2 35 #2 47 #3Nanyang Tech 27 #3 25 #3 32 #4Emory 27 #4 29 #4 40 #4Oklahoma 27 #2 34 #3 26 #4So Calif 30 #4 8 #6 7 #7Kansas 30 #2 22 #2 22 #3Fla Atlantic 32 #3 55 #3 56 #3UCLA 33 #3 47 #3 43 #4New York U 33 #4 50 #5 61 #6Penn St 35 #4 22 #4 19 #5Notre Dame 36 #2 30 #3 24 #4Berkeley 36 #3 53 #3 60 #3CUNY-Baruch 38 #5 30 #5 29 #7Michigan 38 #4 50 #5 44 #5Columbia 40 #3 45 #4 57 #4

Panel C: Average of Topic and MethodUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Tx-Austin 1 #5 1 #6 1 #7Texas A&M 2 #4 2 #5 4 #6Michigan St 3 #4 3 #6 3 #7Indiana Bloomington 4 #4 7 #5 8 #6Illinois at Urb. Cham. 5 #5 4 #6 6 #7U of Washington 6 #3 6 #4 9 #5Stanford 7 #4 16 #5 19 #5




Panel C: Average of Topic and MethodUniversity 6 Yrs. 12 Yrs. All

Missouri 8 #3 9 #4 11 #4So Calif 9 #4 5 #5 2 #6Ariz St 9 #3 8 #4 5 #6Georgia St 11 #3 12 #3 12 #4Emory 12 #3 13 #4 16 #4Chicago 13 #6 15 #6 21 #6So Carol 14 #3 14 #4 17 #4Wisconsin 15 #3 11 #4 10 #5Arizona 16 #4 19 #4 15 #4Michigan 16 #3 20 #4 22 #5Cornell 18 #2 32 #3 30 #3Ohio St 19 #3 10 #4 7 #5Pittsburgh 19 #2 24 #3 29 #4Miami 19 #2 34 #2 49 #2Penn 22 #4 21 #5 28 #5Iowa 23 #4 29 #4 25 #4Utah 24 #3 22 #3 18 #3Penn St 25 #3 17 #4 14 #5Alberta 26 #2 33 #3 41 #4Toronto 27 #3 25 #3 20 #4Hong Kong PolyTechnic U 28 #3 41 #3 39 #4MIT 29 #3 44 #4 59 #4Duke 30 #3 23 #4 27 #4Oklahoma 31 #2 27 #2 24 #3Temple 32 #2 18 #3 13 #4Nanyang Tech 33 #2 43 #3 57 #3Fla Internat 34 #2 58 #2 69 #2No Carol 35 #3 36 #3 37 #4Florida St 36 #3 28 #3 32 #4Georgia 37 #3 49 #3 36 #4Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 37 #2 54 #3 61 #3UCLA 39 #2 56 #3 56 #3Columbia 40 #2 47 #4 46 #4




credit for all research published by professors currently employed at the institution rather thangiving institutions credit for publications of faculty who published at the university but no longerwork there. These rankings should be useful to decision-makers in multiple settings �e.g., prospec-tive Ph.D. students, doctoral students, faculty, accounting departments, business schools, anduniversities�.

This study is not without limitations. We highlight the most important limitations and cautiondecision-makers to consider how these limitations may impact their decision-making setting. First,using counts to rank accounting research programs treats all articles as making equal contributionsto the literature. Counts do not take into consideration level of impact of a particular article. Thus,faculty at an institution that produces few highly innovative and paradigm-altering articles maynot rank as highly in these rankings as an institution that focuses on producing a large quantity ofresearch publications. Whether one of these strategies is “better” in terms of producing accountingknowledge is debatable, and this research does not provide evidence for either side of this debate.

Second, we consider a basket of accounting journals that likely vary in terms of perceived andactual quality. We do not attempt to weight articles published in different journals as being worthmore or less than other articles due to the subjective nature of determining weightings. Wecarefully selected journals, choosing only those of perceived high quality �Lowensohn and Samel-son 2006; Herron and Hall 2004; Chan et al. 2009� while balancing this with the publicationpatterns that previous researchers have noted some journals exhibit �Bonner et al. 2006�.

Third, we do not explicitly take into account faculty size in determining our rankings; we alsoemploy a methodology that does not explicitly consider an institution’s ability to influence re-searchers’ ability to publish by having access to such things as more and/or better databases,providing more talented research assistants, decreasing teaching loads, or other similar character-istics that likely improve research productivity. However, our methodology does indirectly capturethis ability as the most prolific researchers are likely aware of these institutional advantages andmore likely to work at schools that offer these advantages.

Finally, by recognizing the mobility of human capital, an excellent research school recently“raided” of talent may receive a low ranking. It is likely that a school that establishes the cultureand financial means to be a top-tier research school will likely be able to attract high qualityresearchers even if it was recently raided. Thus, some schools may appear low in our rankingsbecause at the time of this study they have not been able to rebuild their faculty. We combat thisproblem by providing a companion website that provides regular updates of the rankings �see theAppendix for more details�.

Even with the limitations to this research, we view this study as providing an importantincremental contribution to the prior research ranking literature. In addition, we believe this studywill be highly useful to the academy and the professional community of accountants.

APPENDIX ADescription of Companion Website

To enhance the usefulness of the descriptive data presented in this paper, we have developeda companion website for this paper. The website is located at http://rankings.byuaccounting.net.The website provides the following:

• Complete listing of rankings for each ranking presented in this paper �not just top 40rankings�.

• Rankings of the topical by methodological area crosses �e.g., rankings of audit-experimental, audit-archival, etc.�.

• Periodically updated rankings as new journal issues are published and professors changelocations.



http://rankings.byuaccounting.net

• Ability for users to view all institutions’ rankings on a single page.

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Bazley, J. D., and L. A. Nikolai. 1975. A comparison of published accounting research and qualities ofaccounting faculty and doctoral programs. The Accounting Review �July�: 605–610.

Bonner, S. E., J. W. Hesford, W. A. Van der Stede, and S. M. Young. 2006. The most influential journals inacademic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society 31: 663–685.

Brown, L. D. 2003. Ranking journals using social science research network downloads. Review of Quanti-tative Finance and Accounting 20 �3�: 291–307.

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Chan, K. C., C. R. Chen, and L. T. W. Cheng. 2007. Global ranking of accounting programmes and the eliteeffect in accounting research. Accounting and Finance 47 �2�: 187–220.

——–, ——–, and ——–. 2009. Ranking accounting journals using dissertation citation analysis: A researchnote. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34: 875–885.

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Glover, S. M., D. F. Prawitt, and D. A. Wood. 2006. Publication records of faculty promoted at the top 75accounting research programs. Issues in Accounting Education 21 �3�: 195–218.

Hasselback, J. R. 2008. Accounting Faculty Directory 2008–2009. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson PrenticeHall.

——–, and A. Reinstein. 1995. A proposal for measuring the scholarly productivity of accounting faculty.Issues in Accounting Education �Fall�: 269–306.

Herron, T. L., and T. W. Hall. 2004. Faculty perceptions of journals: Quality and publishing feasibility.Journal of Accounting Education 22 �3�: 175–210.

Hodder, L., P. E. Hopkins, and D. A. Wood. 2008. The effects of financial statement and informationalcomplexity on analysts’ cash flow forecasts. The Accounting Review 83 �4�: 915–956.

Lowensohn, S., and D. P. Samelson. 2006. An examination of faculty perceptions of academic journal qualitywithin five specialized areas of accounting research. Issues in Accounting Education 21 �3�: 219–239.

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Trieschmann, J. S., A. R. Dennis, G. B. Northcraft, and A. W. Niemi. 2000. Serving multiple constituenciesin the business school: MBA program versus research performance. Academy of Management Journal43 �6�: 1130–1141.

Windall, F. W. 1981. Publishing for a varied public: An empirical study. The Accounting Review 56 �3�:653–658.

Zivney, T. L., and A. G. Thomas. 1985. A comprehensive examination of accounting faculty publishing.Issues in Accounting Education �Spring�: 1–25.



http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2005.06.003

http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1023628613622

http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1023628613622

http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:REQU.0000025763.61552.0e

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-629X.2007.00234.x

http://www.caaa.ca/CAR/EditorRpt/index.html

http://www.caaa.ca/CAR/EditorRpt/index.html

http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/iace.2006.21.3.195

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2004.09.002

http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/accr.2008.83.4.915

http://dx.doi.org/10.2308/iace.2006.21.3.219



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