Here is an interesting study of the publication records of 212 faculty who were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor or from associate professor to full professor at the top 75 accounting research programs from 1995-2003. The study was motivated by the observation that "accounting scholars have relatively fewer publication outlets and fewer publications than colleagues in other business disciplines." (Why is that?)
Some of the results ...
* The promotion track for accounting professors is substantially longer than for law professors. "On average, professors included in the study took 6.29 (std. dev. = 1.2, median = 6.0) and 11.78 (std. dev. = 1.65, median = 12.0) years to achieve rank advancements to associate and to full, respectively." Although law schools vary, I would guess that those numbers are 4 years and 7-8 years, respectively, with the tenure decision coming after 6-7 years.
* Professors at top schools placed more articles in top accounting journals, but published fewer total articles than their peers at lower-ranked schools. The authors observe, "Consistent with commonly-accepted anecdotal evidence, these results suggest that professors at top schools focus their efforts on publishing articles in academic journals considered the highest quality rather than publishing a greater number of articles in professional or other academic journals."
* No matter how many articles you publish, you had better get some of them in top journals if you want to be promoted. "At the time of full promotion, every professor in the study had published at least one article in a journal ranked in a top 15 or top business journal and only about 5 percent of the promoted full professors in the study did not have a top 3 or top business publication at the time of promotion. At the high end of the spectrum, more than 15 percent of the promoted full professors had published 10 or more articles in top 3 accounting or top business journals and almost 30 percent had published 10 or more articles in a top 6 accounting or top business journal at the time of promotion."
One of the biggest differences between publishing legal scholarship and publishing business scholarship is that law journals do not have the same well-recognized hierarchy as other disciplines. As I explained here, we tend to think of the journals as falling into relatively rough prestige groupings that are highly correlated with the prestige of the sponsoring institutions. Also, we tend not to make strong inferences about the quality of scholarship based on its placement within the hierarchy because students are making the publication decisions without reference to well-accepted methodological standards. Of course, all of this strikes our colleagues in other university departments as insane, but there it is.
I was interested in the authors' observation that accounting scholars tend to have fewer publications than other business scholars. (Associate professors at top schools have roughly 6-11 publications and full professors have 15-21 publications.) These numbers seem high relative to law professors, who do not have a tradition of publishing co-authored articles (though that is becoming more common) and whose articles tend to be ridiculously long.
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1. Posted by Unknown Professor on August 8, 2005 @ 8:22 | Permalink
I'm a finance prof, but am in a finance/accounting department. Also, I do work that fits in both disciplines. So, I have a few thought on at least the finance/accounting breakdown.
My impression is that there are about the same number of journals that are considered "A" level in the two disciplines, but that there are fewer "respectable but not top" level journals in accounting than in finance. In finance, there are a good number of "mezzanine" journals like the Journal of Corporate Finance, The Journal of Banking and Finance, and so on. So, there are fewer outlets for the acounting folks.
One other pattern I've noticed is that Accounting Profs in the Tax subdiscipline seem to often have higher numbers of small pubs. My off-the-cuff guess would be that some of their work ends up in legal outlets.
2. Posted by Gordon Smith on August 8, 2005 @ 9:29 | Permalink
Thanks, UP. That's interesting. Do accounting profs complain about having too few outlets for publication? If the difference is in "respectable but not top" journals, I can see how that would matter.
3. Posted by save_the_rustbelt on August 8, 2005 @ 21:19 | Permalink
Accounting has very few purely scholarly journals and many which are practitioner oriented.
Journal of Accountancy, for example.
Since anything vaguely related to the real practice of accounting is considered 2nd class, there is fierce competition for the "scholarly" journals.
The scholarly journals tend to publish dense empirical studies which no one in their right mind would want to read. See any edition of the "Accounting Review" if you have insomnia. Or "Decision Sciences."
For the tax geeks there are a number of practitioner oriented journals which publish from CPAs, lawyers, CLUs, etc., so there is more variety, but these are not considered "scholarly."
This has very little to do with teaching, of course, but then teaching will not earn anyone tenure or a promotion.
Over the past thirty years the accounting profs have done everything possible to limit the supply of new accounting profs, so now there is a serious shortage developing. Seems very few want to spend four years being abused to earn a Ph.D., and then spend six years being abused before earning tenure.
Great system.
4. Posted by Robert Schwartz on August 11, 2005 @ 19:57 | Permalink
"accounting scholars"
Now there is an oxymoron.
5. Posted by David Wood on June 14, 2006 @ 7:14 | Permalink
We have updated the article and added a website with additional analyses (see http://marriottschool.byu.edu/emp/GloverPrawittWood/)
The comment about fewer publication outlets is from other studies comparing business school disciplines. On average, accounting faculty publish less A and A- articles then other disciplines in the business school. It would be interesting to do some type of comparison across disciplines, but difficult because of so many differences (e.g., tradition to publish few/lots of single author pieces).
In accounting there are 3 real "A" journals and 3 other that are considered A by some schools and not by others. Some of the other business school disciplines have many more A journals, or A journals that publish far more issues.
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