British Accounting Review (1989) 21, 267-278

PERFORMANCE INDICES AND RELATED

MEASURES OF JOURNAL REPUTATION IN
ACCOUNTING
V. A. BEATTIE AND K. J. RYAN
The Univerrity of Southampton

In this study the general and editorial strength of seven leading accounting journals
is reported upon for the years 1983, 1985 and 1987. Using size-adjusted measures,
we conclude that the editorial boards of theJournal of Accounting and Economics and
the Journal of Accounting Research unambiguously dominate those of the other
journals and that these two journals, with the Accounting Review, consistently
outperformed expectation in attracting citations.

INTRODUCTION
Academic journals are an important vehicle for discourse between
researchers, as well as a means of communicating the results of research to
the community at large (see Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Barnes, 1977).
Publication and subsequent citation of academic research is taken as a
primary indicator of individual, scholastic and institutional reputation. In
the United Kingdom, for example, the University Grants Council (UGC)
and other funding bodies now use publication in ‘refereed’ journals as the
primary component of departmental ranking for funding decisions (see
Rothman, 1987).
In this article we examine the performance of the seven most highly
ranked accounting journals identified in Nobes (1985) peer-evaluation
study. Journals predominantly concerned with issues in finance are, there-
fore, excluded. The 1983 data reported in this study permits comparison
with Nobes (1985):

Journal Nobes Rank (1983 data)

journal of Accounting Research* UAW 1

the Accountiq Review* (AR) 2
journal ofAccounting and Economics* WE) 3
Accounting, Organizations and Society* @OS) 4
Accounting and Business Research (AW 5
Abacus (Ab) 6
-]ournal of Business Finance and Accounting CT’=4 7

Correspondence address: V. A. Beattie, R. J. Ryan, Department of Accounting and Management

Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO9 5NH, U.K.

089(rs939/8',/030267+12 $03.00/O 0 1989 Academic Press Limited

268 V. A. BEAlTIE AND R. J. RYAN

This list incorporates the top four accounting journals (*) identified by
Brown & Gardner (1985) using citation analysis. A number of other
studies have used citational analysis to evaluate the impact of journals in
accounting (see, for example, McRae, 1974; Dyckman & Zeff, 1984).
We have measured journal performance in two ways by examining: (i)
the reputation of each journal’s editorial board; and (ii) the reputation
accruing to the journal itself. We would argue that the quality of an
editorial board, revealed by the citational credit gained by the individuals
concerned, is an important determinant of the quality of a journal. Over
the longer run, improvement in the quality of an editorial board should
yield a corresponding improvement in the impact of articles published
and thus in the reputation of the journal concerned. Journal reputation is
measured using a performance index which relates actual-to-expected
cross-journal citations.
In the second part of this article we discuss the methods used in this
study and comment upon their rationale. In the third part we present the
results of our study. In the final part we enter a number of caveats
concerning this research and draw a number of conclusions.

METHODS
In order to analyse the citational strength of individuals and journals we
constructed an exhaustive data base ofbibliographies attached to all articles,
notes and research reports published in the seven journals for the years
1983,1985 and 1987. In our view, the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
was inappropriate for this task as citations in that index are retrievable only
under primary authorship. Garfield (1979) found that ‘failure to include
secondary-author papers in citation counts introduces a substantial error
at the very highest stratum of cited scientists’ (pp. 242-243). Given our
expectation that this study would focus attention on just that stratum of
accounting scholars, we concluded that use of the SSCI would be likely
to produce a severe and non-random bias in our results. Our detailed
procedures were as follows.

(a) For the selected years we used, as the citation source, all main articles,
notes, comments and research reports (assignable articles) appearing
in the seven journals listed above (only book reviews were omitted).
From these sources the authors of all bibliographic citations were
recorded, whether these referred to books, journal articles, mono-
graphs, dissertations or working papers. During this process self-
citations and articles with multiple authorships were noted.
(b) Self-citations were eliminated from the count. This is a common
 PERFORMANCE INDICES IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS 269
practice and is consistent with the definition of a citation in terms
of the impact of an item on others. In cases where the source and
reference citation had an author in common, the citations to all
coauthors were eliminated.
(c) Given the degree of uncertainty concerning the relative con-
tributions to a given article by joint authors, we have followed the
principle of indifference and credited authors with the appropriate
fractional citation following the practice adopted by Dyckman &
Zeff, 1984; Gray, Haslam & Prodhan, 1987.
(d) In a number of cases miscitations and ambiguity in attribution were
identified. These problems were rectified by recourse to the original
source material.
(e) Cited items which did not have a personal author (for example
editorial policy statements and statements from publishing organ-
izations) were not relevant to the study and were excluded.

No attempt was made to adjust for negative citations since it is now widely
accepted that the significance of a paper, in terms of its contribution to
intellectual progress, is not necessarily determined by its ‘correctness’ (Cole
& Cole, 1973; Downing & Stafford, 1981). No attempt was made to adjust
for the age of cited items. The rationale for this practice is to control for
the expanding total number of citations due to growth within the litera-
ture. This did not appear to be necessary as Cole & Cole (1967) found that
there was a very high correlation between citation counts weighted to
take into account age and unweighted counts.
The journal performance index is calculated as the ratio of actual-to-
expected citations received for each journal. Expected citations are derived
from a naive model which assumes an even distribution of citations by
assignable article count over the preceding five years of publication for
each journal. We adopted a five-year span to reduce any unsystematic
annual distortions which may occur, rather than the one-year period
used in other studies (see Garfield, 1979). This model assumes that each
assignable article is equally likely to attract citations and is designed to
reduce size bias between journals (cf. Roche & Smith, 1978).
Corrections to the data, adjusting for the relative preponderance of
notes and short research reports (minor items), did not significantly alter
the expectations for each journal and are, therefore, not reported. The
insensitivity of the expectation measure to minor items can be explained
by three factors: (i) only JAE and Ab did not produce some minor items
containing bibliographies but not counted as full articles; (ii) minor items
attract heavy citations in their own right; and (iii) in some journals the
distinction between full articles and certain minor items is difficult to
justify in terms of length.
270 V. A. BEATTIE AND R. J. RYAN

TABLE 1
Citations attributable to editorial board members

Category 1983 1985 1987

..~
Total citations, excluding self citations 4647 4946 5306
Number of cited authors 3144 3408 3547
Citations to editorial board members
(excluding self citations) 980 867 1078
Number of authors who are also editors 202 165 185
Percentage of total attributable to editors 21% 18% 20%
Percentage of authors who are also editors 6% 5% 5%

RESULTS
In Table 1 we show the totals collected from the seven journals in each of
the three years studied, the citations attributable to editorial board mem-
bers and the relevant percentages. On average, editorial board members
collect 3.6 times as many citations than would be anticipated on the basis
of their numerical strength amongst the total number of cited scholars.
This multiplier would be even higher if the number of non-publishing
and uncited scholars within the community were to be included. Any
explanation for this high ratio is necessarily ambiguous, although it is clear
that highly cited academics do dominate the editorial boards of the journals
studied. This evidence should also be considered in conjunction with the
tendency, reported upon later in this article, of academics to highly cite
the principal editors of their target journals (see Table 8).
For each of the three years of this study, cumulative citation functions
(against ranked order of each editorial board) were prepared. Figure 1
shows the cumulative function for 1987. Functions were prepared for 1983
and 1985 but for the sake of brevity are not reported here.
On the basis of these functions, rankings were prepared using both first
and second-order dominance criteria. Ordered tuples, decided by the
second-order criterion, are demarcated by square parentheses [ 1. For
second-order estimation, upper bounds on the respective functions were
defined by the size of the smaller editorial board. Definition by size of the
larger editorial board reverses the ranking of AOS and AR in 1983 and
ABR and AR in 1985. Total, mean and median citations count for each
editorial board are also reported in Table 2.
Two points are striking about the relationships shown in Figure 1 and
Table 2: (i) the high stability of the rankings over the years studied and
(ii) the unambiguous domination by JAE and JAR of the other journals
in terms of the quality of their editorial boards. Cross correlations between
the median scores for each editorial board are shown in Table 3.
 PERFORMANCE INDICES IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS 271

In

.E 300
E
0
.-P
H
z 200
3

100

ROS

0 IO 20 30 40 50
Ranked order of editorial hard members (by citations)
Figure 1. Cumulative function of editorial citations (1987). 0 = editor (average ifjoint).

TABLE 2
Rankings of citational strengthsof editorial boards

1983 dc* UAE > JAR] > [AOS > AR] > Ab > ABR > JBFA
total 38551 423.07 162.40 208.83 97.67 73.50 50.16
median IO.58 7.50 4.50 1.83 2.50 2xu.I 0.42
mean 13.77 11.13 5.80 2.78 4.65 3.34 1.39
1985 dc DAR > JAE] > [AOS > ABR > AR] > [Ab > JBFA]
total 376.58 338.00 133.00 116.11 145.57 74.75 43.50
median 6.58 9.00 3.00 3.12 2.19 3.00 1.oo
mean 9.18 11.27 4.16 4.47 3.03 3.56 3.11
1987 dc UAE > JAR] > [AOS > AR] > ABR > Ab > JBFA
total 390.22 405.14 219.29 221.63 88.57 129.13 51.67
median 9.17 7.92 3.25 1.50 3.17 2.50 0.84
mean 13.01 Il.25 5.77 4.14 4.61 4.40 3.69

* dc = dominance criterion.
272 V. A. BEATTIE AND R. J. RYAN

TABLE 3

1983 1.000 0.000 0.000

1985 0.975 l-000 0~000
1987 0,970 0.984 1~000

In Table 4, we give the rankings of all authors accumulating ten or

more citations in each of the three years. The names of the authors who
were on the editorial board of at least one of the seven journals in the
years concerned have been starred (*).
Clearly, certain of the members of this list are representatives of disci-
plines other than accounting and a certain number of the positions are, we
suspect, atypical and unlikely to be sustained. A clear example is Foucault
listed ninth in 1987 whose writings have become highly regarded in certain
circles. On the other hand, the position of others is understated. For
example, a number of scholars in the finance area feature in this list,
although much of the citation to their work is found in other literature.
To complete our picture of editorial performance we include a ranking
of editorial commitment by institution over the longer term (197387).
This ranking (Table 5) is based on editorial-person years and gives one
indication of the influence of the various schools in the development of
the accounting literature.
In order to compare our results with Dyl & Lilly’s (1985) study, which
was based on publication output, we also provide a ranking for the four
year period 1978-81 covered in their study.
In Table 6 we show the citations count to each of the seven journals for
1983,1985 and 1987.
The diagonal of the citations matrix contains the self-citation count
for each journal. Totals are struck for each journal, both including and
excluding self-citations. Anticipated citations are estimated from the count
of the number of assignable articles to each journal compared with the
total. The performance index for each journal is calculated as the ratio of
actual-to-expected for each journal. This rank ordering is remarkably
stable over time (see Table 7).
It is interesting to note that these seven journals fall into two quite
distinct groupings. Three journals (JAR, JAE and AR) are heavily cited
by writers in the other journals whilst the remainder did not receive the
 PERFORMANCE INDICES IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS 273

TABLE 4
Researchers attracting ten or more citations

1983 1987

Rank Name Cltlnonr Rank Name Cltatlonr Rank Name Clk3”O”b

I* Foster G 45al 1 Fama EF 37-50 1* Beaver WH 49.x3

2’ Beaver WH 39.83 2* Beaver WH 31.83 2* Foster G 41-50
3* Watts RL 33.67 3’ Watts RL 27.03 3’ Hopwaod AG 37.23
4+ Fama EF 31.25 4* Kaplan RS 24-50 4* Warrs RL 34 33
5’ Ztmmerman JL M.17 5 Miller MH 24-S” 5* Kaplan RS 31.67
h* Ashton RH 29.50 6’ Zimmerman IL 22.33 6 Fama EF 3050
7* Libby R 24.50 7* Hopwood Ati 22-30 7* Z,mmermm JL 2933
R’ Hopwood AC 24.00 8 Holmstrom H 20 50 X* Ltbbv R 24 50
‘I Williamron OE 22.17 9’ Ashton RH 2o.M) 9 Foucault M 24X”.l
IO’ LevB ?.2al lO* Jensen MC 19-67 lO* Ball R 23.33
11 Stmon HA 21-83 11. Foster G 19.50 11 Altman El 22.67
12* Ball R 21.67 12’ Libby R 19 50 12* Dcmrlu TS 21al
13* Demrk, JS 21-67 13* Kmney WR 19 33 13 I,,” Y 18.83
14 Altman EI 20-17 14f Baima” s 17.83 14’ Arhton RH 18.50
15 I,,” Y 1803 15 Ross SA ,767 15+ Cooper DC 1840
16’ <eftw,ch R 17.67 16* Demsk! JS 1700 If,* Chambers RJ 17-83
17* Gonedcr NJ 1650 17. Gonedes NJ 16.83 17 Halmrttom B 16.50
1X’ Sunder 5 16.50 18* BallR ,h so in* LevB ,650
19 Ouch, WG 16.00 19 Wdhamron OE 16.50 19* O&y D1 16.50
20* Chambers RJ 1503 20 Shame WF 16.00 20’ Tinker AM 16.17
21 Emhom HJ 1503 21 Schoies MS 15.83 21 Retganum MR 15.50
22 Sterhng RR 15al 22* Lee TA IS(X) 22 Roll R 1s-50
23 Benston G, 14-50 23 Lewellen WG 13-67 23* Jensen MC 15.33
24* La&r EE 14.42 24 Einhotn HJ 13.33 24 Ross SA IS.17
25 Deakm EB 14.33 25* Lev B 13-33 25* Chrism AA 1467
26 Roll R 14.25 26* Fttth M 13.M) 2h’ Sunder S 14-5”
27 Collins DW 14-17 27* Sunder S 13-M) 27* Ohlron IA 13.83
28 Match JG 14-17 28f Pacell JM 12 67 2x Shatpe tiF 13.50
29f Otlev Dl 14.00 29 De&n EB 12.50 29* Thomas AL 13.50
30 Thoinpm JD 14.00 30 Nater I 12.50 30’ Patell IM 12-83
31’ Abdel-Khdk AR 13.67 31 Stetlin~ RR 12-00 31* Wrigit WF 12-17
32* Joyce EJ 13.50 32 Altman EI 1, x3 32 Simon HA 12-00
33f Patell IM 13.50 33* Lawlcr EE 11 50 33* Gonedes NJ 11.83
34* Thorn-& AL 13.50 34 Meckling WH 11~00 34* Holthaussen RW 11.83
35’ Dopuch N 13.33 35 Modqham WH 11Go 35 De&m EB 11.50
36’ WeickKE 13.06 36’ 0th DT I1 00 36 Homgren CT Il.50
31* Jensen MC 12.75 37 Chili J 10.50 37* Kmney WR 11.50
38* Argyns C 12.50 38 ouch, WG IO.50 38 Miller MH 11~50
3Y* F&ham GA 11-50 39 Stiglitz JE 10 50 39 TafP,er RJ 1l-50
4” Meckling WH 11.50 40’ Lcftwch R 10.33 443 Anare RK I1 33
41 Ross SA 11 50 41. Chambers RJ lOa 41’ Leftwxh R 11.17
42’ HoEarth R 11.33 42* Horarth R IOGI 42 Myers SC 11-M)
43 Schbles M 11.33 43* Joyce EJ 10+4l 43’ Larcker DF lo-83
44’ Holtbaurcn RW IlaO 44 Lmtner J 10-w 44 Scholes MS 1050
4S* ZetTSA 11.00 45 Mahell ‘I 10ca 45 Fischhoff B 10.17
46* Kaplan RS 10.67 46 Roll R 1OGl 46’ Rxks WE lO.li
47 Black F IO.50 47 Smtth VL 10-W 47’ Zmiicwskl M 10-08
48 Chandler AD 10.50 48’ Solomons D 1000
49’ Warner JB 10-50 49’ Verrecchia RE tow
50 Anthony RN IO.33
51 Burt.3 WT 10~00
52 Hinhletfer J 1oal
53 Mdler MH 13.00

l lndnidual w&s an edmxinl board member on at least one of the seven~aumals that year.
274 V. A. BEATlIE AND R. J, RYAN

TABLE 5
Institutional ranking by editorial board person-years on the top seven accounting journals jbr the
years 1973-87 and 197841

Number of editorial person years

Dyl and Lilly
Institution (1973-87) Institution (1978-81) rank

Chicago 165 Chicago 56 (1)

Stanford 128 Stanford 45 (4
Cornell 73 Cornell 27 (10)
British Columbia 67 British Columbia 23 (17)
Rochester 66 California, Berkeley 22 (11)
California, Berkeley 63 Rochester 16 (13)
Lancaster 62 Texas at Austin 16 (15)
Pennsylvania 51 Iowa 15 (8)
Washington 49 New South Wales 15 (6)
New South Wales 48 Lancaster 14 (3)
Carnegie-Mellon 46 Carnegie-Mellon 13 C-J
Iowa 45 Northwestern 13 C-1
Pittsburgh 45 Queensland 13 (-)
Northwestern 44 New York 12 (4)
Minnesota 43 Pennyslvania 10 (22)

same number of citations (in total) as any of the three journals appearing
in the top group.
The position of AOS is surprising as it is the only member of this lower
group which is cited by Brown and Gardner (1985) as being a leading
journal. It is clear from our statistics that AOS is very highly regarded by
authors writing for AOS, although it has yet to make any significant
impact elsewhere. Of all the journals studied, it appears to have formed
the strongest clientele effect within the accounting literature. Such clientele
effects may be associated with the relative newness of a particular journal
(which does not appear to be significant in the case of JAE) and with the
relative isolation ‘of the intellectual universe in which a journal operates’
(Garfield, 1979). G’lven the rather unexpected performance of AOS, we
examined journals in cognate disciplines to AOS. Apart from the seven
journals included in this study AOS authors most heavily cite: Admin-
istrative Science Quarterly (24 citations in 1987), New Left Review (13),
Sociology (10) and]oumal of Management Studies (10). Only three citations
to AOS arose from these sources in that year.
Finally, in Table 8 we offer an index of the tendency of academics
writing in these journals to appeal to the work of the editors. The expected
citations to each of the journal editors assumes an equilikelihood of citations
in the respective journal adjusted for journal size (in terms of the total
 PERFORMANCE INDICES IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS 275

TABLE 6
Performance indexfir the Seven leading accounting journals

1983 To: JAE JAR AOS AR Ab ABR JBFA Total

FWTl:
JAE [391 27 113
JAR 33 ,I::] 67 1 279
AOS 32 (lo:, 1 3 1 184
AR 38 89 17 ,2, 8 3 288
Ab 7 9 4 16 41 3 54
ABR 2 26 3 59 5 I4Zl 148
JBFA 12 48 2 72 8 7 ,i:, 204
Total 131 426 131 416 28 63 75 1270
Total (esc) 92 251 29 286 18 23 20 719
Assignable articles
(5 yean) (4 49 206 146 71 178 227 1174
Expected citations
((a/1174)x719) 30 126 89 182 44 109 139 719
Performance 3.1 2.0 0.33 1.57 0.42 0.21 0.14
index

1985 To: JAE JAR AOS AR Ab ABR JBFA Total

From:
JAE [361 5 50
JAR 59 12579, 101 1 2 1 434
AOS 2 19 ,I::, p::, 3 5 197
AR 18 90 6 ri 1 8 235
Ab 4 6 1 19 1 39
ABR 13 44 7 60 11 13il 194
JBFA 2 41 5 37 4 13 $1 134
Total 134 466 163 369 24 59 68 1283
Total (esc) 98 209 32 259 18 21 36 673
Assignable articles 53 242 144 268 67 185 234 1193
(5 years)
Expected citations 30 137 81 151 38 104 132 673
Performance 3.27 1.53 040 1.72 0.47 0.20 0.27
index

1987 To: JAE JAR AOS AR Ab ABR JBFA Total

From:
JAE WI 14 112
JAR 39 ,I::, 27 2 1 183
AOS 2 42 PW ,I& 3 6 4 371
AR 43 151 22 &I 3 325
Ab 13 1 27 3 64
ABR 12 44 24 68 7 rG1 185
JBFA 20 74 1 54 1 6 ,i:, 221
Total 162 490 282 375 23 45 84 1461
Total (esc) 116 376 48 270 12 26 19 868
Assignable articles 56 224 160 230 66 183 236 1155
(5 years)
Expected citations 42 168 120 173 50 138 177 867
Performance 2.76 2.24 0.4 1.56 0.24 0.19 0.11
index

* esc = excluding self-citations.

276 V. A. BEATTIE AND R. J. RYAN

TABLE 7
Cross correlation of pelformance indices between each of‘
the years studied (pearson rho-lower /eff, significance
levels-upper right)

1983 1985 1987

1983 1 .ooo 0.000 0.000

1985 0.981 1,000 0,000
1987 0.987 0.944 1.000

assignable articles published). This is a difficult statistic to interpret as a

number of variables can effect its magnitude. The most straightforward
interpretation is that the work of editors deserves citation on its merit and
that this, coupled with a high clientele effect with a particular journal
(notably AOS but also, to a lesser extent, JAE), will lead to a high value
on this index. On the other hand, it may also reflect, in part, a belief by
authors that quoting the work of a particular editor will improve their
chances of publication.

CONCLUSION
Our principal conclusions from this research are as follows.
(i) Editorial board members are much more heavily cited than other
researchers in this set ofjournals.
(ii) In terms of editorial strength, JAR and JAE unambiguously domi-

TABLE 8
Index oftendency to cite principal editor by authors

Total citations No. of citations Total citations Expectation

to editors in own journal in journal (v) = [F/v: (iii)] / Index
Journal (0 (ii) (iii) WW

JAE 86.99 26.00 558 5.70 4.56

JAR 15.00 3.67 845 1.49 2.46
AOS 37.23 31.03 2463 10.76 2.88
AR 11.50 2aO 1635 2.21 090
Ab 2.00 - 525 0.12
ABR 11.33 1.00 1262 1.68 0.59
JBFA 0.50 - 1234 0.14 -

8522[= (iv)]
 PERFORMANCE INDICES IN ACCOUNTING JOURNALS 277
nate the group of journals studied and this performance is reflected
in their general citational strength.
(iii) Only JAR, JAE and AR exceeded expectations in terms of citational
strength.
(iv) AOS appears to exhibit a strong clientele effect with only a small
proportion of its citations arising from other journals.

These conclusions are based upon statistics of journal performance using .

a comprehensive citations data base drawn from seven leading accounting
journals. The construction of this data base proved necessary because of
various biases inherent in published citation sources. However, there are
a number of problems with this type of work which should be considered
and accounted for before the data is used for weighting the merits of
publication in particular journals. First, the data is not exhaustive,
although, in our view, and on the basis of other studies cited above, these
seven journals are the most highly regarded of the (35) journals identified
by Zeff (1988) as forming the accounting literature to date. No other
journal in the accounting area collected more citations in either our study
or the SSCI as the lowest ranked journal identified above.
The second point which challenges this work is that the journals do not
form a homogeneous group and that a high degree of segmentation has
occurred in the ‘market’. We accept this argument to a point. AOS, for
example, has a following amongst writers in ‘radical accounting’ as well
as the more established areas of behavioural and human information-
processing research (which is also published in JAR and elsewhere). The
same argument can be applied to JAE to a lesser extent. The editorial
policy of JAE supports submission of material exploiting the interlinkage
of accounting with economics and, as such, has defined a specific market
orientation. However, in our view, the most stringent test of the repute
of specific research is in terms of the readiness of writers to cite the ideas
offered when they clearly have no interest in doing so apart from the
merits of the work itself.
Third, the exclusion of the finance literature from this study biases
downwards the citations score of JAR, JAE and to a lesser extent JBFA.
However, we have sought to determine reputation amongst the account-
ing academic community, although we acknowledge the important con-
tribution of finance research to modern accounting thought.

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Dates: Received 8 November 1988; in revised form 14 March 1989.