ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION Vol. 25, No. 4 2010 pp.

631654

American Accounting Association DOI: 10.2308/iace.2010.25.4.631

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical 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 research programs constructed from publication counts in top journals AOS, Auditing, BRIA, CAR, JAE, JAR, JATA, JIS, JMAR, RAST, and TAR . In contrast to previous studies, we recognize the mobility of intellectual assets tied to the human capital of accounting researchers, and therefore base our rankings on the researchers current afliations rather than their afliations at the time of publication. Also, we categorize each article written by topical area auditing, nancial, managerial, accounting information systems, tax, and other and by methodology analytical, archival, experimental, and other and provide separate accounting program rankings by topical area and by methodology. These two innovations provide a rich, centralized information resource for decisionmakersboth institutional and individualin choosing how to allocate time, resources, and expertise. Keywords: accounting research rankings; accounting research methodology; accounting research topical areas. Data Availability: Requests for data may be made to the authors. JEL Classications: M4; M40; M41; M42; M49.

INTRODUCTION ome of the most important career decisions made by academic accountants are made in an environment 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, or other measures of quality such as surveys of perceptions and accounting rankings that reduce all accounting topical and methodological research production into a single ranking number. Given that most academic accountants specialize in a particular sub-discipline of accounting, decisions based 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 Associate Professor, Brady Williams is an alumnus, and David A. Wood is an Assistant Professor, all at Brigham Young University.
We express our thanks to Derek Oler, Mitch Oler, and Chris Skousen for sharing data with us. We thank George Foster, Jeff Hoopes, Robert Jensen, Steve Kachelmeier, Jagan Krishnan, Jeff McMullin, Eric Press, Kari Olsen, Chad Simon, Jason Smith, Nate Stephens, Stanley Veliotis, and participants at the 2008 BYU Accounting Research Symposium for helpful comments and suggestions.

Published Online: November 2010

631

632

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

specialized, granular information that could better inform decision-makers. We contribute to knowledge in the eld of accounting academics by providing granular, quantitative information to these decision-makers. We propose a unique design for measuring the intellectual assets held by accounting research programs that will enhance the current body of ranking literature in two ways. First, we assume that the intellectual assets of a researcher stay with that researcher when moving from institution to institution.1 Second, recognizing specialty areas both topical and methodological within the accounting disciplinea similar concept currently exists in other business school disciplines e.g., management we report rankings by methodology and topical area that allow institutions to be recognized for their expertise in specialty areas.2 In regards to the second contribution, since the most inuential accounting journals publish a disproportionately high number of articles in the nancial specialty area Bonner et al. 2006 , parties interested in expertise in other specialty areas may make sub-optimal decisions by relying on ratings heavily inuenced by the nancial accounting specialty. The creation of accounting research program rankings by specialty area allows universities to compare and contrast their programs with programs that are focusing on the same specialties. It also allows individual academics to recognize pockets of specialty where they might choose to network and it allows future academics to evaluate the depth and breadth of research coming from universities where they might pursue their terminal degree. These rankings signicantly increase the amount of available information that could be used by multiple decision-makers, including: Prospective Ph.D. students: Each student or accounting professional that decides to pursue a Ph.D. in accounting is immediately faced with the challenge of nding a university with programs, faculty, and expectations that match the applicants needs, wants, and career goals. This decision is often multifaceted and complex. Providing rankings by topical area and methodology will allow prospective Ph.D. students to better target programs which are best able to support their research interests.3 Ph.D. graduates: Rankings decomposed by discipline and based on current location of human capital will also benet Ph.D. candidates as they graduate and enter the job market. They will be able to use these rankings to target positions at universities that t their career goals. This study identies top programs in each specialty area, which is especially valuable if these programs do not register highly in general ranking studies. Research institutions: Accounting department heads, business school administrators, and university leadership may nd these results useful in establishing legitimacyboth internal and external. This study recognizes those schools that have been and are making a concerted

Crediting a publication to the authors current institution allows a universitys research ranking to change based on the addition 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 intellectual assets to an entity incapable of reasoninga university. 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 ranked research programs, but not by topicaccounting information systems AIS /auditing/nancial/managerial/taxor methodologyarchival/analytical/experimental. We note that Brown and Laksmana 2004 break rankings of Ph.D. programs into two categories, nancial and nonnancial. We note from a survey we conducted of 15 11 respondents pre-doctoral students invited to an informational doctoral program meeting by the IS section of the AAA, all potential doctoral students indicated they would consult topical and methodological 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 deciding which programs they would apply to and attend other factors ranked were nancial aid, graduation rates, time to graduate, placement, physical location, and overall rankings .

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

633

effort to specialize and improve their research reputation. A school that has never placed highly in general rankings may be able to use these rankings to demonstrate credibility in certain specialty areas or methodologies. This credibility can help justify internal funding for materials, technology, or additional research, and help attract external funding. Also, these rankings could be used as evidence for accreditation purposes of the research production of an institutions faculty. Professional organizations: In July 2008, the AICPA announced the introduction of a $15 million fund designed to send experienced practitioners back to school to get Ph.D.s to help ll the shortage of audit and tax faculty. This fund, which is made up of donations from many of the largest accounting rms and many state accounting associations, is designed to send professionals back for audit and tax training in Ph.D. programs. The rankings provided in this paper 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 programs where they will get the best audit- and tax-specic training and by helping fund administrators 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, we conclude by discussing the implications of our research and the consequences of design choices we made in our study. We note that we include an Appendix discussing a companion website that provides additional information that could not be included in the article because of space constraints. SAMPLE DESCRIPTION To create our rankings, we index all peer-reviewed articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society AOS ; Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory Auditing ; Behavioral Research in Accounting BRIA ; Contemporary Accounting Research CAR ; Journal of Accounting & Economics JAE ; Journal of Accounting Information Systems JIS ; Journal of Accounting Research JAR ; Journal of Management Accounting Research JMAR ; Journal of the American Taxation Association 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. Glover et al. 2006; Bonner et al. 2006; Lowensohn and Samelson 2006 . Studies have also provided evidence that these journals may not provide representative coverage of accounting methodologies and topical areas Bonner et al. 2006 . Using the results of a survey of 517 academics from various American Accounting Association AAA sections Lowensohn 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 for publishing audit research aside from those already mentioned. Including these additional journals should provide greater coverage of topical areas and methodologies that are not adequately represented in the traditional top six journals. Our rankings do not explicitly recognize top-tier contributions of researchers in supporting disciplines e.g., nance, economics, psychology, etc. . We made this choice because of our inter-

We do not include articles that were invited by the editor or conference discussant papers such as JAR or CAR conference discussion papers since these articles are not required to go through the peer-review process. Also, we exclude articles written directly to a professional audience and educational cases. Although the survey included the topical areas of government and nonprot, we do not employ these topics in our rankings, so we did not include them in the journal selection process.

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

634

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

est in identifying top accounting research programs and because of the time-intensive nature of creating these rankings. While contributions in the top-tier of supporting journals are important and contribute to the academic prestige of the researcher, we believe they are less relevant to identifying accounting expertise than an evaluation of research published in accounting journals.6 METHODOLOGY To 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 timeintensive 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 prolic researchers before 1990 but have not continued to actively research since 1990 likely have fewer current intellectual research assets to share with colleagues.7 We categorize each article by methodological category: analytical, archival, experimental, or other; however, our methodological categories are not mutually exclusive.8 For example, Hodder et al. 2008 employ an experiment as well as archival tests in their paper. We categorize this article as both archival and experimental for purposes of our rankings. We dene our methodological classications as follows: Analytical: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on the act of formally modeling theories or substantiating ideas in mathematical terms. These studies use analytic devices to predict, explain, or give substance to theory. Archival: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on objective data collected from repositories. Also included are studies in which the researchers, or another third party, collected 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 researcher gathered by administering treatments to subjects. Usually these studies employ random assignment; however, if the researcher selected different populations in an attempt to manipulate a variable e.g., participants of different experience levels were selected for participation , we also consider these experimental in nature. Other: studies that did not t into one of the other methodological categories. The methodologies in these studies vary signicantly and include such things as surveys, case studies, eld 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 categorized as providing a contribution to each area e.g., Prawitt et al. 2009 examine how internal audit quality audit impacts earnings management nancial . In categorizing articles by topical area, we employ the following denitions: AIS: studies which address issues related to the systems and the users of systems that collect, store, and generate accounting information. Users are dened broadly to include those in6

7 8

Glover et al. 2006 examine the publication records of faculty promoted at the top 75 research schools. In unreported analyses, the correlation between publishing in the top three accounting journals TAR, JAR, and JAE and publishing in other top business journals is 0.86 when considered at the school portfolio level. This suggests that while our results will not provide a complete picture of the articles published by accounting scholars, they are unlikely to be biased by excluding articles published in other top business journals. We explore the importance of currency in more depth later in the paper. 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 to contribute in multiple areas.

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

635

volved in collection, storage, or use of accounting information, or even the implementation of the system. These systems may be electronic or not. Research streams include, but are not limited to, design science, ontological investigations, expert systems, decision aides, support systems, processing assurance, security, controls, system usability, and system performance. Auditing: studies in which the topical content involves an audit topic. These studies vary widely and include, but are not limited to, the study of the audit environmentexternal and internal, auditor decision-making, auditor independence, the effects of auditing on the nancial reporting process, and auditor fees. Financial: studies that address the topical content of nancial accounting, nancial markets, and decision-making based on nancial accounting information. Managerial: studies that examine issues regarding budgeting, compensation, decisionmaking within an enterprise, incentives, and the allocation of resources within an enterprise. Tax: studies that examine issues related to taxpayer decision-making, tax allocations, tax computations, structuring of accounting transactions to meet tax goals, tax incentives, or market reactions to tax disclosures. Other: studies that do not t into one of the other topical areas. The topical areas in these studies vary signicantly and include such things as education, methodologies, law, psychology, 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 the authors on this project reviewed each article categorization made by the Oler et al. 2009 team and made changes as deemed appropriate to t our categorization scheme. For the other journals, two of the authors on this project categorized each article. All discrepancies in ratings were resolved through discussion. After categorizing each article, we identied the authors current school afliation by rst searching in the 2008 Hasselback directory Hasselback 2008 . We then visited the website of the university listed in the Hasselback directory and veried that the professor was listed as being employed at the institution this and the article listings were last updated in December 2009 . If the author was not listed in the Hasselback directory, or if we could not nd them on the website of the institution listed by the Hasselback directory, we searched the Internet for the author and recorded the authors current university afliation.9 If professors were listed as holding joint appointments or were listed as visiting scholars, we credited the home school for those publications. We created initial rankings after performing this step; subsequently, for all schools that were listed in the top 50 of any of these initial rankings, we revisited the schools faculty website, veried that the authors listed belong to that school, and searched for any professors listed on the school website that had not been categorized in our database. If we could not nd a professors afliation after performing all these steps, we considered that professor to be no longer employed in academia and, therefore, we gave no credit to any institution for that individuals research.10 To create our rankings, we gave each author full credit for each article published in these journals i.e., for coauthored papers, all institutions of the authors received credit for the publication, and if multiple authors were from the same institution, the institution received credit for each

10

To conduct our Internet search, we searched for the researchers 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 then visited that university website to verify the faculty member was employed at the school. If we could not locate a professor on a universitys directory, they were not included in this study. We gave credit to a school for authors outside of accounting departments yet who publish in accounting journals, if we could locate them in their current school afliation web directory as described in the text.

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

636

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

author .11 We then summed the number of total publications for each school by methodology and by topical area. Finally, we ranked schools by the total productivity of the faculty currently at that school.12 We take four additional steps to maximize the usefulness of this data. First, for all rankings we provide 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 more individuals who have the possibility of publishing articles. However, we do not scale our rankings by faculty size for several reasons. First, our objective is ranking the intellectual assets available at institutions rather than ranking the average productivity of faculty. Further, choosing to scale by faculty size is problematic due to the difcult nature of determining faculty size, especially in specialty areas. Several possible ways to scale the data by size include scaling by the size of the department, number of authors who published the articles, or the number of professors who research in an area or use that methodology . We noticed as we categorized articles that many schools do not have a separate accounting department or combine the accounting department with nance, information systems, or the entire business school. In addition, many accounting academics work in administrative positions, making it difcult to choose whether to include them in the department. These problems make scaling by the count of faculty in the department problematic and subjective. Scaling by the number of authors who published articles in this index is problematic in that one person could publish a high number of articles and therefore cause that school to score very highly despite being the only active researcher at the institution. We do not believe this type of ranking would be of greatest usefulness to the accounting academy. Finally, scaling by the number of professors who research in an area is problematic because many researchers research in multiple methodologies and 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 consolidated rankings: by topical area, by methodology, and by both topical area and methodology. This consolidation allows for a discussion of which institutions are well versed or well rounded in all specialty areas. The consolidated rankings are created by averaging the topical area rankings, the methodology rankings, or both. This is in contrast to consolidated rankings based on total publication counts. Rankings based on total publications introduce weighting problems as some areas are disproportionately represented in journals Bonner et al. 2006 . These rankings recognize schools that are able to do well in all or virtually all methodological and topical areas and are likely of special interest to prospective Ph.D. students who may not know exactly what they will want to research and would like to go to a school that supports broad topical areas and/or broad methodologies. The third step we take is to report rankings based on three different time windowsthe full-time window 20 years , the previous 12 years, and the previous six years. Providing rankings of shorter windows allows users to infer various trends. For example, if a school is very highly ranked in the full-time window but not in the previous six-year window, it may suggest that the school employs an aging faculty who are winding down their research careers. Conversely, a school that is ranked very highly in the six-year window but not in the full window may have promising young scholars who are highly productive but have not been employed a sufcient length of time to produce a tremendous quantity of research.
11

12

We chose to give each author full credit because we view each author as likely to have increased their intellectual assets by working on the project. We also did not want to introduce noise or bias by attempting to create a subjective weighting scheme of the value of different journal articles. If high quality outcome data become available in the future for which reliable and theoretically justied weightings could be created, then future researchers should reexamine these rankings using those weights. However, to our knowledge, we are unaware of a high quality weighting based on empirical data. If we discovered that a professor had retired, was emeritus, or had died, we did not include them in the rankings.

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

637

Finally, we create a website with additional functionality to increase the usefulness of the rankings see the Appendix for additional discussion of the website . RESULTS Table 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 in terms of topics of articles published. Of the traditional Big 3 accounting journals TAR, JAR, and JAE , TAR publishes the broadest topical scope of articles. AOS and BRIA are the only nonspecialty-topic journals that publish a higher percentage of articles in an area other than nancial 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 of publication of AIS research in any journal other than JIS. We note that Table 1 does not consider the quantity of different types of articles submitted to the journals; therefore, we cannot conclude from this table that there is an editorial or reviewer bias against certain topical areas or methodologies.13 Panel B shows the percentage of articles by methodology for each different journal. With the exception of AOS, BRIA, JIS, and JMAR, archival research is the dominant methodology published. 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 research methodologies can be published somewhere, it also shows that specic journals may have dened methodological 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 at least 16 percent of the time in managerial publications. Financial has the least distribution of methodologies as archival is used 76 percent of the time, and the next highest used methodology is 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 in 10 percent of publications. Finally, AIS uses primarily experimental and other methodologies to address research questions. Table 2 presents rankings based on raw total counts of total articles published. This ranking is comparable to most previous accounting program rankings. The particular institutions that rank highly in this ranking are similar to past studieswhich provides some face validity to the methodology we employ as the results are consistent with past studies. However, one can see how our decision to only credit an institution for faculty currently at the institution inuences rankings. For example, the University of Michigan has traditionally been one of the top producers of accounting research; however, in our rankings they appear as only the 18th ranked school in the last six years. This is largely due to the loss of key researchers in recent years. Although giving credit 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 accounting research 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 Contemporary Accounting Research 2007 Editors Report reveals that only ve of 258 submissions to the journal were in the area of tax. Thus, even if CAR published all of these articles, it would still show a low percentage of published tax studies in a presentation similar to Table 1. Thus, the results in Table 1 do not necessarily suggest editor/reviewer bias, but may be explained by unknown submission rates to the journals.

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

638

TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics

Panel A: Percentage of Articles by Topical Area Published in Different Journals Journal AIS Audit Financial AOS Auditing BRIA CAR JAE JAR JIS JMAR JATA RAST TAR 1% 3% 1% 1% 0% 1% 100% 0% 0% 0% 1% 13% 97% 35% 28% 6% 18% 18% 1% 1% 6% 21% 16% 19% 13% 54% 78% 70% 10% 1% 28% 79% 58% Managerial 39% 1% 19% 15% 16% 13% 5% 98% 4% 16% 18% Tax 2% 0% 5% 8% 8% 7% 0% 1% 96% 4% 10% Other 33% 13% 37% 12% 5% 3% 0% 3% 7% 0% 6%

Panel B: Percentage of Articles by Methodology Published in Different Journals Journal Analytical Archival AOS Auditing BRIA CAR JAE JAR JIS JMAR JATA RAST TAR 1% 3% 2% 20% 13% 21% 3% 19% 14% 36% 14% 10% 38% 1% 52% 83% 64% 12% 16% 53% 62% 63%

Experimental 13% 33% 59% 18% 1% 13% 39% 16% 21% 3% 21%

Other 77% 30% 38% 12% 3% 3% 47% 51% 18% 0% 4% (continued on next page)

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

Panel C: Percentage of Articles by Methodology per Topical Area Topical Area Analytical AIS Audit Financial Managerial Tax Other 4% 8% 12% 22% 13% 4%

Archival 12% 32% 76% 22% 58% 22%

Experimental 36% 38% 7% 16% 19% 16%

Other 48% 23% 5% 40% 10% 59%

Issues in Accounting Education Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area 639

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 nancial and audit or use both experimental and archival methodologies .

640

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

TABLE 2 Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Raw Total Article Counts

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

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

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

641

rankings in Table 2, one can compare topical and methodological rankings to this table to get some idea of how well the overall rankings represent each individual topical and methodological area ranking. Table 3 presents the rankings of universities broken down by topical area. We list the top 40 schools for each topical area and present three rankings: rankings over the previous six, 12, or full-year range rankings are sorted by the six-year column . We list each topical area alphabetically. There are several interesting things to note from the rankings other than just the rank ordering of the universities. The trend of universities rankings from six years to 20 years is valuable information. For example, a school like Florida International in the audit rankings is ranked rst over the six-year window but eighth over the 20-year window. This suggests that Florida International has been very active in the recent past and is the top producer of audit research in the last six years. Analyzing the trends of publications also reveals interesting ndings when looking at an entire topical areas rankings. For example, the top ten schools in nancial over the six-year window were all in the top 25 over the full-year window. In Managerial and Auditing, four and three schools in the top 10 during the six-year window were not in the top 25 schools over the full-year window. This suggests that there is signicant change in rankings for some topical areas relative to the other topical areas. These rankings are also useful to non-U.S. schools. Note in the managerial rankings that ten of the top 40 schools in the six-year window are international schools. In the audit rankings, 11 of the top 40 schools are international schools. These rankings help to give credibility to these institutions in terms of their ability to produce top quality research in given topical areas. Also of interest in these rankings is the number of faculty whose published articles have contributed to a given ranking. For example, in the managerial rankings, Stanford is rated rst over the full-year range even though only ve different authors published managerial articles. The second ranked university, Michigan State, has twice as many authors. This information could be used by potential Ph.D. students current doctoral students in targeting which school to attend work for . Whereas Stanford appears to have fewer researchers publishing managerial research, these researchers are publishing a very high volume of articles. Michigan State, the second ranked school, has more researchers, 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 methodology rather than by topical area. We note that users may benet from interpreting Table 4 in similar fashion to the way we discussed interpreting Table 3. Table 5 presents three different rankings that provide information about which schools provide the greatest breadth of research expertise. In Table 4 we provide the results of averaging the topical area rankings, averaging the methodology rankings, or averaging the topical area and methodology rankings. Schools that focus on one or two topical areas or on a single methodology will not rank as highly in these rankings. As would be expected, large schools fare particularly well in the breadth rankings. These schools likely have great breadth because their size allows professors to specialize their teaching and thus their research in areas other than nancial accounting. As with Table 24, we provide rankings over different time horizons so users can make informed decisions using these rankings. CONCLUSIONS This 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, nancial, managerial, and tax and by methodology analytical, archival, and experimental . Second, we give institutions

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

642

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

TABLE 3 Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Topical Area

Panel A: AIS University Rutgers Florida St No Carol St Cen Fla So Illinois Tx Tech Portland St Cal St Long Bch No Arizona Auburn Tulsa Ghent U Bentley Ariz St Michigan St Texas A&M Georgia St Arkansas Okla St Tennessee Houston-Cl L No Colo Emory Maastricht Akron Kent St Hawaii-Manoa Queensland Missouri So Florida Kansas Virg Comm Delaware Temple Utah Iowa State Denver U Brock U Cal St Northridge Fla Atlantic Panel B: Audit University Fla Internat Illinois at Urb. Cham. 6 Yrs. 1 #3 1 #2 3 #3 4 #2 4 #3 4 #3 4 #3 4 #1 4 #2 4 #2 4 #3 4 #3 13 #2 13 #1 13 #2 13 #1 13 #2 13 #1 13 #1 13 #2 13 #2 13 #2 13 #1 13 #2 13 #1 13 #2 13 #1 13 #2 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 29 #1 12 Yrs. 2 #4 9 #2 10 #3 4 #2 4 #4 6 #4 10 #3 10 #2 17 #2 17 #2 17 #3 17 #3 1 #4 6 #3 10 #2 10 #1 10 #3 10 #1 26 #1 26 #2 26 #2 26 #2 26 #1 26 #2 26 #1 26 #2 26 #1 26 #2 3 #3 6 #4 17 #3 17 #2 26 #1 26 #2 47 #1 47 #1 47 #1 47 #1 47 #1 47 #1 All 2 #5 9 #3 19 #3 4 #3 5 #6 8 #4 9 #4 19 #2 14 #2 19 #3 28 #3 28 #3 1 #4 3 #5 9 #3 14 #2 14 #3 19 #1 19 #2 28 #3 40 #2 40 #2 40 #1 40 #2 40 #1 40 #2 40 #1 40 #2 5 #3 7 #4 19 #4 28 #2 40 #1 40 #2 14 #1 28 #1 28 #3 40 #2 40 #1 68 #1

6 Yrs. 1 #4 2 #9

12 Yrs. 2 #5 5 #11

All 8 #5 4 #13 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area Panel B: Audit University Northeastern Rutgers Bentley New So Wales Missouri Nanyang Tech Texas A&M Kentucky Queens Fla Atlantic Hong Kong Uni. of S&T Brigham Young U Tennessee Tx-Austin Indiana Indianapolis Hong Kong PolyTechnic U Temple So Carol Wisconsin Alabama Kansas So Calif Florida Alberta Mass Georgia Auckland Athens Georgia St Indiana Bloomington Toronto Virginia Tech Chinese HK U Auburn No Texas Nat Taiwan U Cornell SUNY-Bingham Panel C: Financial University Chicago U of Washington Stanford Tx-Austin Duke MIT Penn New York U

643

6 Yrs. 3 #6 4 #6 5 #5 5 #6 5 #2 8 #4 9 #3 9 #3 9 #4 9 #6 9 #2 14 #4 14 #5 14 #3 14 #2 14 #4 14 #3 14 #4 21 #3 21 #3 21 #3 21 #4 21 #2 21 #3 21 #3 21 #4 21 #4 21 #4 31 #4 31 #3 31 #2 31 #2 31 #2 31 #3 31 #3 31 #4 31 #2 31 #3

12 Yrs. 3 #6 11 #7 4 #6 6 #10 7 #2 7 #6 16 #4 21 #3 24 #5 36 #7 36 #2 7 #8 7 #5 13 #6 14 #4 14 #7 21 #4 24 #4 1 #6 12 #4 16 #4 19 #6 19 #4 30 #4 30 #3 36 #4 50 #4 59 #4 24 #5 24 #5 30 #2 30 #4 30 #5 42 #3 50 #3 50 #4 59 #2 59 #4

All 3 #6 15 #9 6 #6 9 #11 15 #2 15 #6 10 #9 15 #4 39 #5 32 #9 50 #3 13 #8 13 #5 2 #10 20 #5 24 #7 34 #4 39 #5 5 #9 24 #4 24 #4 6 #9 10 #5 34 #6 50 #3 29 #5 81 #4 100 #4 15 #6 34 #8 29 #5 44 #5 50 #5 58 #5 44 #6 68 #5 12 #3 100 #4

6 Yrs. 1 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 #18 #10 #13 #13 #10 #10 #11 #11

12 Yrs. 3 #19 1 #12 2 #14 5 #18 7 #10 13 #13 4 #15 6 #14

All 5 #21 1 #18 2 #15 5 #20 10 #10 15 #13 3 #17 4 #15 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

644 Panel C: Financial University Penn St So Calif Texas A&M Iowa Arizona London Bus Cornell Indiana Bloomington No Carol Northwestern Michigan Toronto CUNY-Baruch Illinois at Urb. Cham. Ohio St Rochester Columbia Wisconsin Utah Missouri UCLA Michigan St Ariz St Hong Kong Uni. of S&T Harvard Berkeley Yale Lancaster Miami Minnesota Houston Georgia Panel D: Managerial University Stanford Michigan St London SchEcon Ohio St Tilburg U UCLA Indiana Bloomington Berkeley Pittsburgh Tx-Austin University of Navarra IES Michigan So Carol So Calif

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

6 Yrs. 9 #9 9 #9 9 #9 9 #11 9 #10 14 #6 15 #6 16 #10 17 #9 17 #10 17 #9 17 #8 17 #11 17 #8 23 #9 23 #7 25 #8 25 #6 27 #6 27 #8 29 #5 29 #7 29 #7 29 #7 33 #8 33 #6 33 #4 33 #8 33 #5 38 #6 38 #7 40 #5

12 Yrs. 9 #11 12 #15 14 #12 20 #11 20 #11 29 #8 8 #9 15 #13 10 #10 10 #12 17 #11 23 #9 25 #15 31 #9 15 #15 41 #7 19 #11 35 #9 30 #8 37 #9 17 #7 22 #12 32 #9 32 #10 23 #14 25 #6 37 #5 47 #8 48 #5 32 #8 37 #9 28 #9

All 11 #12 8 #19 9 #15 24 #13 24 #13 31 #8 16 #9 13 #16 7 #11 11 #12 16 #14 27 #11 21 #22 32 #13 19 #17 36 #9 14 #11 34 #9 41 #8 45 #10 18 #9 26 #17 20 #15 39 #11 29 #17 21 #7 44 #5 60 #8 64 #5 32 #9 34 #10 28 #10

6 Yrs. 1 #5 2 #6 3 #5 4 #4 4 #5 4 #5 7 #5 7 #4 7 #4 7 #6 7 #2 12 #4 13 #5 14 #4

12 Yrs. 2 #5 1 #9 5 #8 5 #7 13 #6 17 #5 4 #6 10 #5 13 #6 20 #7 20 #2 5 #6 29 #6 8 #8

All 1 #5 2 #10 7 #10 4 #10 29 #6 27 #6 7 #6 10 #7 17 #6 37 #7 40 #2 11 #6 46 #6 4 #8 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area Panel D: Managerial University Melbourne Rice Temple Penn St Miami Monash U Illinois at Urb. Cham. Emory Duke Georgia St Car Mellon Yale Maastricht Leuven Louisiana Tech MIT Twente Miss St Penn Columbia Manchester Iowa Queens Utah Chicago Warwick Panel E: Tax University Arizona Dartmouth Chicago Iowa Texas A&M Tx-Austin Oregon Georgia Geo Mason So Carol U of Washington Michigan Missouri No Carol Brigham Young U Conn Columbia Virginia Tech Tx Tech Lingnan U

645

6 Yrs. 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 33 33 33 33 33 33 33 33 #3 #1 #2 #4 #4 #1 #4 #2 #2 #2 #3 #1 #2 #3 #3 #3 #2 #2 #2 #1 #2 #2 #2 #3 #3 #1

12 Yrs. 10 #4 12 #2 13 #3 17 #7 17 #4 20 #2 26 #6 26 #3 29 #4 29 #4 37 #3 37 #3 37 #2 37 #3 51 #3 51 #3 62 #2 62 #2 3 #7 8 #4 20 #7 29 #3 29 #3 29 #4 37 #5 37 #3

All 7 #7 21 #2 6 #4 21 #9 29 #5 14 #3 37 #8 40 #4 29 #5 46 #5 20 #7 40 #4 55 #3 63 #3 78 #3 78 #3 95 #2 95 #2 3 #9 14 #4 21 #9 12 #5 21 #6 46 #4 37 #5 40 #3

6 Yrs. 1 #3 2 #2 3 #3 3 #3 5 #2 5 #2 5 #2 8 #2 8 #2 8 #2 8 #1 8 #1 8 #4 14 #2 14 #3 14 #3 14 #2 14 #3 14 #3 14 #3

12 Yrs. 1 #3 5 #2 6 #4 8 #3 2 #8 4 #3 10 #4 11 #3 11 #4 19 #2 19 #1 19 #1 34 #4 2 #5 7 #6 8 #3 11 #7 14 #3 15 #4 15 #3

All 2 #3 5 #2 6 #5 16 #4 4 #9 2 #5 11 #4 16 #3 24 #4 24 #4 24 #2 34 #2 53 #4 1 #6 9 #6 8 #3 21 #7 14 #3 16 #5 29 #3 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

646 Panel E: Tax University Notre Dame Alabama Indiana Bloomington Virg-Grad Idaho State Kansas Laval Cen Fla Michigan St Houston Florida St Rochester Arkansas Cal Davis Ariz St No Texas Tilburg U Pittsburgh Wyoming Miami

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

6 Yrs. 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 #2 #1 #2 #2 #1 #3 #3 #1 #2 #1 #2 #1 #2 #1 #2 #2 #1 #2 #2 #1

12 Yrs. 19 19 28 28 34 34 34 15 19 19 28 34 34 34 44 44 44 58 58 58 #2 #2 #4 #2 #1 #3 #3 #4 #4 #1 #3 #2 #4 #1 #3 #2 #1 #2 #2 #1

All 29 #3 34 #3 14 #8 46 #2 40 #1 46 #4 53 #3 34 #4 9 #8 16 #3 40 #4 53 #2 53 #4 53 #1 13 #7 65 #2 65 #1 53 #2 84 #2 84 #1

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

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

647

TABLE 4 Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Research Methodology

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

6 Yrs. 1 #15 2 #10

12 Yrs. 3 #16 15 #12

All 3 #19 14 #12 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

648 Panel B: Archival University Stanford Penn U of Washington Texas A&M Duke Arizona So Calif Iowa New York U Penn St London Bus No Carol Michigan Tx-Austin CUNY-Baruch Michigan St Fla Internat Hong Kong Uni. of S&T Indiana Bloomington Toronto Missouri Rochester Wisconsin Utah Temple Harvard Columbia Ohio St Northwestern UCLA Miami So Methodist Georgia Tx-Dallas Berkeley Hong Kong PolyTechnic U Illinois at Urb. Cham. Geo Wash Panel C: Experimental University Tx-Austin Cornell Indiana Bloomington Northeastern Illinois at Urb. Cham. Michigan St So Carol Brigham Young U

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

6 Yrs. 3 #11 3 #10 3 #7 3 #12 3 #10 3 #11 9 #11 10 #13 11 #11 12 #9 13 #5 14 #9 14 #9 14 #9 14 #12 18 #9 18 #6 18 #7 21 #10 21 #9 21 #8 24 #7 25 #7 26 #7 27 #7 27 #10 27 #7 27 #9 31 #8 31 #5 31 #6 34 #7 35 #6 35 #6 35 #4 35 #6 35 #7 40 #7

12 Yrs. 1 #12 2 #14 4 #10 5 #15 6 #10 13 #12 8 #13 16 #13 10 #15 10 #13 34 #6 6 #10 12 #13 14 #12 23 #15 9 #16 20 #8 31 #9 18 #12 22 #9 23 #10 37 #7 17 #12 27 #9 18 #10 20 #17 25 #9 30 #11 25 #10 27 #6 37 #6 36 #9 31 #9 31 #12 35 #5 37 #9 59 #8 51 #9

All 1 #13 7 #16 4 #15 5 #18 10 #10 13 #15 5 #17 17 #13 8 #15 10 #14 38 #6 2 #12 16 #14 12 #13 19 #22 9 #20 34 #8 37 #10 22 #13 26 #9 34 #11 39 #9 21 #13 41 #9 17 #11 25 #19 22 #10 34 #12 28 #11 28 #8 60 #6 28 #12 20 #10 27 #12 24 #6 50 #10 50 #11 41 #12

6 Yrs. 1 1 3 3 5 5 5 8 #6 #5 #6 #7 #6 #6 #5 #6

12 Yrs. 3 #10 5 #5 2 #8 3 #8 6 #12 8 #6 11 #5 1 #11

All 1 #12 3 #6 4 #10 5 #8 7 #13 8 #7 9 #6 6 #11 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area Panel C: Experimental University Alabama Nanyang Tech Ariz St Emory Georgia St U of Washington Bentley Florida St Kansas Texas A&M Kentucky Mass So Illinois Georgia Tech Auburn Cen Fla Pittsburgh Georgia Leuven York U Canada Tilburg U New So Wales Oklahoma Wisconsin Virginia Tech Tx Tech Melbourne Missouri So Florida Iowa State No Carol St Louisiana Tech

649

6 Yrs. 8 #4 10 #4 10 #4 10 #5 13 #6 14 #3 15 #2 15 #4 15 #3 15 #2 19 #3 19 #3 19 #3 19 #3 19 #3 24 #3 24 #4 24 #4 24 #3 24 #3 24 #2 30 #1 30 #2 30 #3 30 #2 30 #3 30 #1 30 #2 30 #3 30 #2 30 #3 30 #1

12 Yrs. 7 #5 8 #6 11 #8 13 #6 16 #6 13 #5 10 #3 22 #7 22 #3 26 #3 16 #4 18 #4 26 #4 31 #4 33 #3 15 #4 26 #4 36 #5 36 #3 36 #3 45 #2 19 #6 19 #6 19 #6 22 #4 22 #5 26 #3 26 #3 36 #5 55 #3 55 #3 55 #1

All 12 #5 14 #6 2 #10 23 #6 19 #7 12 #7 9 #4 30 #7 34 #3 29 #6 9 #6 27 #4 33 #4 27 #4 47 #4 21 #7 15 #5 43 #5 58 #3 58 #3 67 #2 16 #7 16 #6 16 #7 25 #5 31 #5 36 #3 36 #3 47 #6 34 #6 36 #7 67 #2

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

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

650

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

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

6 Yrs. 1 #6

12 Yrs. 1 #7

All 1 #8 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area Panel B: Average of Method University Illinois at Urb. Cham. U of Washington Pittsburgh Ariz St Texas A&M Wisconsin Ohio St Michigan St Indiana Bloomington Florida Alberta Arizona Missouri Stanford Florida St Cornell Georgia Chicago Miami Brigham Young U Penn Hong Kong PolyTechnic U Duke Georgia St Tilburg U Nanyang Tech Emory Oklahoma So Calif Kansas Fla Atlantic UCLA New York U Penn St Notre Dame Berkeley CUNY-Baruch Michigan Columbia Panel C: Average of Topic and Method University Tx-Austin Texas A&M Michigan St Indiana Bloomington Illinois at Urb. Cham. U of Washington Stanford

651

6 Yrs. 2 #6 3 #4 4 #4 5 #4 6 #5 7 #4 8 #4 9 #5 10 #5 11 #2 11 #4 13 #4 14 #3 15 #5 16 #3 16 #3 18 #3 19 #6 20 #3 21 #4 21 #5 23 #3 24 #4 24 #3 26 #2 27 #3 27 #4 27 #2 30 #4 30 #2 32 #3 33 #3 33 #4 35 #4 36 #2 36 #3 38 #5 38 #4 40 #3

12 Yrs. 2 #7 3 #4 7 #4 5 #5 14 #5 6 #5 4 #5 9 #6 10 #6 10 #2 12 #4 19 #4 13 #4 28 #5 16 #4 20 #4 27 #4 17 #7 32 #3 24 #5 32 #5 38 #4 14 #5 21 #4 35 #2 25 #3 29 #4 34 #3 8 #6 22 #2 55 #3 47 #3 50 #5 22 #4 30 #3 53 #3 30 #5 50 #5 45 #4

All 2 #8 2 #6 12 #4 4 #7 20 #6 6 #6 5 #6 9 #7 8 #7 10 #3 13 #5 18 #5 14 #4 42 #6 16 #5 17 #4 39 #4 23 #7 52 #3 34 #6 46 #6 33 #4 11 #5 21 #4 47 #3 32 #4 40 #4 26 #4 7 #7 22 #3 56 #3 43 #4 61 #6 19 #5 24 #4 60 #3 29 #7 44 #5 57 #4

6 Yrs. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 #5 #4 #4 #4 #5 #3 #4

12 Yrs. 1 #6 2 #5 3 #6 7 #5 4 #6 6 #4 16 #5

All 1 #7 4 #6 3 #7 8 #6 6 #7 9 #5 19 #5 (continued on next page)

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

652 Panel C: Average of Topic and Method University Missouri So Calif Ariz St Georgia St Emory Chicago So Carol Wisconsin Arizona Michigan Cornell Ohio St Pittsburgh Miami Penn Iowa Utah Penn St Alberta Toronto Hong Kong PolyTechnic U MIT Duke Oklahoma Temple Nanyang Tech Fla Internat No Carol Florida St Georgia Hong Kong Uni. of S&T UCLA Columbia

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

6 Yrs. 8 #3 9 #4 9 #3 11 #3 12 #3 13 #6 14 #3 15 #3 16 #4 16 #3 18 #2 19 #3 19 #2 19 #2 22 #4 23 #4 24 #3 25 #3 26 #2 27 #3 28 #3 29 #3 30 #3 31 #2 32 #2 33 #2 34 #2 35 #3 36 #3 37 #3 37 #2 39 #2 40 #2

12 Yrs. 9 #4 5 #5 8 #4 12 #3 13 #4 15 #6 14 #4 11 #4 19 #4 20 #4 32 #3 10 #4 24 #3 34 #2 21 #5 29 #4 22 #3 17 #4 33 #3 25 #3 41 #3 44 #4 23 #4 27 #2 18 #3 43 #3 58 #2 36 #3 28 #3 49 #3 54 #3 56 #3 47 #4

All 11 #4 2 #6 5 #6 12 #4 16 #4 21 #6 17 #4 10 #5 15 #4 22 #5 30 #3 7 #5 29 #4 49 #2 28 #5 25 #4 18 #3 14 #5 41 #4 20 #4 39 #4 59 #4 27 #4 24 #3 13 #4 57 #3 69 #2 37 #4 32 #4 36 #4 61 #3 56 #3 46 #4

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

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area

653

credit for all research published by professors currently employed at the institution rather than giving institutions credit for publications of faculty who published at the university but no longer work there. These rankings should be useful to decision-makers in multiple settings e.g., prospective Ph.D. students, doctoral students, faculty, accounting departments, business schools, and universities . This study is not without limitations. We highlight the most important limitations and caution decision-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 contributions to 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 may not rank as highly in these rankings as an institution that focuses on producing a large quantity of research publications. Whether one of these strategies is better in terms of producing accounting knowledge 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 and actual quality. We do not attempt to weight articles published in different journals as being worth more or less than other articles due to the subjective nature of determining weightings. We carefully selected journals, choosing only those of perceived high quality Lowensohn and Samelson 2006; Herron and Hall 2004; Chan et al. 2009 while balancing this with the publication patterns 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 also employ a methodology that does not explicitly consider an institutions ability to inuence researchers 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 characteristics that likely improve research productivity. However, our methodology does indirectly capture this ability as the most prolic researchers are likely aware of these institutional advantages and more 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 culture and nancial means to be a top-tier research school will likely be able to attract high quality researchers even if it was recently raided. Thus, some schools may appear low in our rankings because at the time of this study they have not been able to rebuild their faculty. We combat this problem by providing a companion website that provides regular updates of the rankings see the Appendix for more details . Even with the limitations to this research, we view this study as providing an important incremental contribution to the prior research ranking literature. In addition, we believe this study will be highly useful to the academy and the professional community of accountants. APPENDIX A Description of Companion Website To enhance the usefulness of the descriptive data presented in this paper, we have developed a 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 40 rankings . Rankings of the topical by methodological area crosses e.g., rankings of auditexperimental, audit-archival, etc. . Periodically updated rankings as new journal issues are published and professors change locations.

Issues in Accounting Education

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010 American Accounting Association

654

Coyne, Summers, Williams, and Wood

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

REFERENCES
Andrews, W. T., and P. B. McKenzie. 1978. Leading accounting departments revisited. The Accounting Review January : 135138. Bazley, J. D., and L. A. Nikolai. 1975. A comparison of published accounting research and qualities of accounting faculty and doctoral programs. The Accounting Review July : 605610. Bonner, S. E., J. W. Hesford, W. A. Van der Stede, and S. M. Young. 2006. The most inuential journals in academic accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society 31: 663685. Brown, L. D. 2003. Ranking journals using social science research network downloads. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting 20 3 : 291307. , and I. Laksmana. 2004. Ranking accounting Ph.D. programs and faculties using social science research network downloads. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting 22 3 : 249266. Chan, K. C., C. R. Chen, and L. T. W. Cheng. 2007. Global ranking of accounting programmes and the elite effect in accounting research. Accounting and Finance 47 2 : 187220. , , and . 2009. Ranking accounting journals using dissertation citation analysis: A research note. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34: 875885. Contemporary Accounting Research. 2007. Editors Report. Available at: http://www.caaa.ca/CAR/EditorRpt/ index.html. Fogarty, T. 1995. A ranking to end all rankings: A meta-analysis and critique of studies ranking academic accounting departments. Accounting Perspectives 1: 122. Glover, S. M., D. F. Prawitt, and D. A. Wood. 2006. Publication records of faculty promoted at the top 75 accounting research programs. Issues in Accounting Education 21 3 : 195218. Hasselback, J. R. 2008. Accounting Faculty Directory 20082009. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. , and A. Reinstein. 1995. A proposal for measuring the scholarly productivity of accounting faculty. Issues in Accounting Education Fall : 269306. Herron, T. L., and T. W. Hall. 2004. Faculty perceptions of journals: Quality and publishing feasibility. Journal of Accounting Education 22 3 : 175210. Hodder, L., P. E. Hopkins, and D. A. Wood. 2008. The effects of nancial statement and informational complexity on analysts cash ow forecasts. The Accounting Review 83 4 : 915956. Lowensohn, S., and D. P. Samelson. 2006. An examination of faculty perceptions of academic journal quality within ve specialized areas of accounting research. Issues in Accounting Education 21 3 : 219239. Oler, D. K., M. J. Oler, and C. J. Skousen. 2009. Characterizing accounting research. Working paper, Indiana University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Utah State University. Prawitt, D. F., J. L. Smith, and D. A. Wood. 2009. Internal audit quality and earnings management. The Accounting Review 84 4 : 12551280. Trieschmann, J. S., A. R. Dennis, G. B. Northcraft, and A. W. Niemi. 2000. Serving multiple constituencies in the business school: MBA program versus research performance. Academy of Management Journal 43 6 : 11301141. Windall, F. W. 1981. Publishing for a varied public: An empirical study. The Accounting Review 56 3 : 653658. Zivney, T. L., and A. G. Thomas. 1985. A comprehensive examination of accounting faculty publishing. Issues in Accounting Education Spring : 125.

Issues in Accounting Education American Accounting Association

Volume 25, No. 4, 2010

Copyright of Issues in Accounting Education is the property of American Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.