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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