Jeffrey Faux Editor – Asian Review of Accounting June 2011

Publishing, politics and knowledge transfer Jeffrey Faux Editor – Asian Review of Accounting June 2011

Preparing a paper for a journal Comply with journal’s guidelines to authors “Sycophancy” editorial board/likely referees – the chances are their work is worth reading Be systematic in your working methods – keep versions of your paper clearly labelled, data files structured and maintained Be prepared for a long wait for reviewer’s comments, especially from “better” journals Don’t be tempted to send to more than one journal at a time it is unethical

Anatomy of a typical paper • Title page • Abstract • Introduction • Literature Review • Method • Findings • Discussion • Conclusions

Title page • Title • Authors & identification of corresponding authors • Contact Details of all authors • This page is removed by the editor before sending to referees • There should not be anything in the paper that identifies the authors or their institution • Use “Author, (2000)” or XYZ University

Abstract • Your chance to make a first impression and keep it simple! • Conform to guidelines on word length • Ask a non-specialist to read the paper • Emerald’s abstract format: • Purpose of the paper • Design / Method / Approach • Findings • Implications for research, practice and/or society • Does the paper identify clearly any implications for research, practice and/or society? • Does the paper bridge the gap between theory and practice? How can the research be used in practice (economic and commercial impact), in teaching, to influence public policy, in research (contributing to the body of knowledge)? • What is the impact upon society (influencing public attitudes, affecting quality of life)? • Are these implications consistent with the findings and conclusions of the paper? • Keywords (up to 6) • Word limit

Introduction (See Ashton) • Clearly state what the paper is about and why the topic is important • Reader needs a clear and concise statement about the reason/s for doing the research in the first paragraph • Who cares and why? • Provide the structure of the paper

Literature review • Ashton talks of a model or framework – an empirical bias • Opportunity to position your work in the literature • Need to ensure you have included seminal pieces and up to date references to ‘quality’ journals • This is the Editor’s first quality control check • “Does this person know what they are doing?” • “Does this paper have the potential to make a contribution to the existing literature?” • Ends with research questions/aims

Method • Methodology is the study of methods • In this section you justify your choice of method • Need to demonstrate that this method will enable you to answer the questions identified or achieve your aims • In your literature review you will learn the methods tried previously and which worked and which didn’t

Results / Findings • Chose how to analyse your data / present your results • Use appropriate statistical tests • Simple and effective is better than complicated and difficult to understand • Provide dates of surveys, sample sizes, response rates • How have you dealt with outliers?

Discussion • Implications of the study • Link back to research questions • Some of the author’s thoughts about such issues • Do not repeat what is already in the paper • Can the results be generalised?

Conclusion • Revisit the aims – have you achieved them? • Are the results capable of generalisation • Limitations of the study • Possible future research opportunities • Extending the sample, international comparisons, inter-temporal comparisons, different result methods

Why manuscripts are rejected • Drawn from - Journal of Accounting Education – 1998 to 2004 • 1,300 submissions (estimated) • 3,900 review hours (estimated) • 75% rejection rate • 2,925 hours on rejected manuscripts • 73 work weeks on rejected manuscripts • 1.41 work years on rejected manuscripts (Data & graphs courtesy of Jim Rebele, Editor-in-Chief)

Analysis of 133 rejected articles • Motivation/Background (not interesting/relevant to readers, etc) • Design Issues (flawed/poorly planned research design, etc.) • Statistical Issues (inappropriate statistical procedures, etc.) • Results/Implications/Conclusions (insufficient/trivial contributions, etc) • Manuscript Preparation Issues (poor organization/poor writing)

Analysis of Motivation/Background Rejects • Not interesting or relevant to the readers/reviewers • Not consistent with the journal’s objectives/paper is too “general” (e.g., not accounting education) • Poor “motivation” (the authors haven’t established a reason for doing the study) • Failure to “position” the paper vis-à-vis the existing literature in education (both accounting education and the general education literature)/lack of originality of thought/similar paper published elsewhere

Results, implications, conclusions rejects • Paper does not represent a meaningful contribution to the accounting education literature (i.e., insufficient/trivial contribution) • Insufficient evidence/data are not persuasive • Failure to adequately address educational implications (e.g., does not provide meaningful discussion of how the paper can be used to improve the process of accounting education, broadly defined/the authors fail to offer action-oriented recommendations)

All academic papers will be criticised – don’t take it personally Read the reviews and the editor’s comments, but don’t do anything on the day you receive them Discuss with co-author, mentor, colleagues Is the paper fundamentally “flawed”? Are the inadequacies in method (data) irreparable? Can the data be re-analysed? Receiving the Reviewers’ comments

A request for revision is good news! It really is You are now in the publishing cycle. Nearly every published paper is revised at least once Don’t panic! Even if the comments are sharp or discouraging, they aren’t personal Demonstrably and systematically deal with points raised by reviewers Can you satisfy (to a large extent) the reviewers’ criticisms? Be polite and engaging in your response Don’t kid yourself – is it time to give up with this journal? Revising

The politics of research • The impact of research outside academia is gaining increased prominence as governments demand Return on Investment measures • Accreditation organisations such as the AACSB and the EFMD recognise research impact as the key indicator of quality BUT IT REMAINS AS THE KEY INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: HOW TO MEASURE RESEARCH IMPACT • The Excellence of Research for Australia (ERA) journal rankings created a deal of hysteria and the reason was that the rankings were not going to achieve a quantifiable quality measure. (Hence the dumping last week)

Senator Kim Carr 20 May to ERA 2010 methodology for the ERA2012 assessment The changes include: • The refinement of the journal quality indicator to remove the prescriptive A*, A, B and C ranks; • The introduction of a journal quality profile, showing the most frequently published journals for each unit of evaluation; • Increased capacity to accommodate multi-disciplinary research to allow articles with significant content from a given discipline to be assigned to that discipline, regardless of where it is published (this method was successfully trialled in ERA 2010 within Mathematical Sciences); • Alignment across the board of the low volume threshold to 50 outputs (bringing peer-reviewed disciplines in line with citation disciplines, up from 30 outputs); • The relaxation of rules on the attribution of patents, plant breeders’ rights and registered design, to allow those granted to eligible researchers to also be submitted; and • The modification of fractional staff eligibility requirements to 0.4 FTE (up from 0.1 FTE), while maintaining the right to submit for staff below this threshold where affiliation is shown, through use of a by-line, for instance).

Other measures of impact – the H-Index The H-Index The H-Index was formulated by a physicist called Hirsch to give ‘a robust single-number metric of a journal's impact, combining quality with quantity. It can be represented thus: There is anecdotal evidence that it is being quoted by academics in their CVs Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index

H-Index The H-index aims to provide a robust single-number metric of a journal's impact: “An author with an index of 6 has published 6 papers each of which has been cited by others at least 6 times. Thus, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication” BUT… where are the citations from? Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index

H-Index: Another view Confusion reigns… Search on International Marketing Review for its H-index had following results: On Web of Science (ISI): H = 12 On Scopus: H = 19 On Publish or Perish: H = 53 WARNING… where are the citations from? Published research should have impact and citation alone is an incomplete measure of value

A holistic, more rounded approach that considers research impact at many levels is needed: Knowledge Teaching Practice Policy making Economy Society This is the Emerald approach A holistic view of measuring the impact of research

How can you demonstrate your research has impact? How can you demonstrate that your teaching is cutting edge in terms of content AND PRACTICE? Does your paper identify clearly any implications for research, practice and/or society? How can your research be used in practice (economic and commercial impact), in teaching, to influence public policy, in research (contributing to the body of knowledge)? What is the impact upon society (influencing public attitudes, affecting quality of life)? Demonstrating impact as knowledge transfer

Thirty years ago there were only nine Accounting journals published by major publishers In 2010 there were 47 (110) Cabells lists over 90 Accounting journals with rejection rates ISI lists 12 accounting journals (approx) Scopus lists 50 accounting journals (approx) Emerald’s Accounting & Finance portfolio: 15 Accounting journals 10 Finance journals 14 Accounting & Finance books 1.2 million article downloads in 2010 Accounting journals

www.isiknowledge.com (ISI ranking lists and impact factors) www.harzing.com (Anne-Wil Harzing's site about academic publishing and the assessment of research and journal quality, as well as ‘Publish or Perish’ software to conduct citation analysis) www.scopus.com (abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources) www.cabells.com (addresses, phone, e-mail and websites for a large number of journals as well as information on publication guidelines and review information) Useful resources

Associate Professor Jeffrey Faux Associate Dean Teaching & Learning EMAIL jeffrey.faux@vu.edu.au CONTACT DETAILS

Jeffrey Faux Editor – Asian Review of Accounting June 2011