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Association-Wide Journals

The Executive Committee benefited greatly from the advice Council offered regarding the recommendations related to the Association-wide journals. In particular, we spent the majority of our Sunday meeting addressing two questions raised by Council: Why not improve the two existing journals rather than start a new one? Why not survey the membership before making a decision? In the process of addressing these questions, we thoroughly and forcefully argued virtually all of the issues that were raised by Council. I have summarized the key points that were considered during these discussions later.

After extensive deliberation, the Executive Committee voted unanimously in favor of the four recommendations we presented to the Council on Saturday, which were put forth by the task force and supported by the Publications Committee:

1. We recommend that a single Association-wide journal be developed that meets the needs of those with interests in applied scholarship and instructional development.  This journal would include submitted and commissioned articles on curriculum innovation, teaching materials and strategies (cases, assignments, novel approaches and methods), applied research on issues and controversies in practice and teaching, and integrative applications of research to teaching and accounting practice. Like TAR, the focus would be on all sub areas of accounting (managerial, financial, etc.).  In addition, book reviews should be moved from TAR to the new journal. 2. The new journal will continue in print form and be published quarterly, but will also rely more on technology to improve service to subscribers. Cost, timeliness of dissemination, and use of multimedia applications suggest that some of the submissions may be better suited to summary hardcopy publication combined with complete online publication. Articles relying on software and data bases, extensive case materials, and AAA policy-related committee reports are excellent candidates for this approach. Without a decrease in page count, savings on printing and mailing alone should exceed $25,000 per year.

3. The peer review process should be designed to ensure that the journal is known for supporting the highest quality applied scholarship and instructional development.  Coeditor and department editor models similar to those used by many journals should be seriously considered for the new journal. Editor transition issues must also be addressed.

4. TAR should focus exclusively on basic scholarship and be the only association-wide journal with that focus. As detailed later, Saturday’s session with the Council:

• Greatly influenced our decision to support these recommendations.

• Gave us a clearer understanding of the risks associated with replacing Horizons and Issues with the new journal.

• Suggested ways to manage these risks.

• Gave us a deeper appreciation for the opportunity costs of going with the new journal, which caused us to scrutinize the benefits more closely.

• Increased our confidence that the new journal will succeed because its underlying concept incorporates the most important success factors associated with outstanding meetings, as identified at Saturday’s Best Practices session.

• Demonstrated again the benefits that are accrued when the Council and Executive Committee work together on an important issue and gave us great hope that the Council will help insure that the new journal becomes a great success.  Before getting into the details, I would like to preview three big-picture factors that greatly influenced my thinking on this issue and probably had similar effects on others on the Executive Committee:

• The lessons I learned from the Best Practices session profoundly affected my decision to vote in favor of the recommendations. Joe Carcello’s "something for everyone" theme and Ann e Christensen’s story about how tax "researchers" and "teachers" have gradually recognized their common interests by attending practice/teaching sessions clarified and amplified my justification for supporting a single journal that combines applied scholarship and instructional development.

• After considerable reflection, I concluded that we needed to make the decision on Sunday rather than delay it until we could survey members. After spending significant time Sunday analyzing the feedback we received from Council, the Publications Committee and the task force, the Executive Committee was leaning heavily towards favoring the new journal. We also agreed that a membership survey would likely not inform our decision significantly (for the reasons discussed later) and that related delays could aggravate the risks associated with the transition to the new journal. Based on these points, I concluded that if we were likely going to go ahead with one journal eventually, we should make the decision immediately to minimize the transition risks.

• I anticipate that we will encounter some initial resistance when the membership learns that we plan to replace Horizons and Issues with the new journal because the Executive Committee, Publications Committee, and task force have encountered similar reactions whenever we have proposed the idea to new audiences. However, for reasons detailed later, we believe that we can begin to overcome this resistance by holding a "town hall" forum at the annual meeting. In addition, I plan to discuss the issue at the regional meetings I attend during the next couple of months. I am also hoping that many of you on the Council will help us explain the reasoning behind the new journal to colleagues in your sections and regions.

Next, at the risk of omitting important perspectives that influenced our analysis, I will share some points that were raised when the Executive Committee addressed two questions that were posed by Council on Saturday.

Why not improve the two existing journals rather than start a new one?

We had a lengthy discussion comparing the costs and benefits of creating the proposed journal versus improving the existing journals. In particular, we analyzed the following issues that were raised by Council: (a) the brand equity risks associated with library subscriptions, (b) the brand equity risks associated with members’ resumes — the concern that discontinuing Horizons and Issues could potentially devalue previously published articles, and (c) the short-term brand equity risks associated with new submissions — the concern that authors may be reluctant to submit to Horizons and Issues once they know that the journals will be discontinued in the future. We also addressed a question raised by Amelia Baldwin: Why can’t we apply whatever strategy we have in mind to insure that the proposed journal is first rate to the two existing journals? Related to this question, we also assessed the synergy benefits of combining applied scholarship and instructional development into a single journal (discussed above).

Here are some of the key points that were made when we discussed these issues:

• The Executive Committee believes that the financial risks associated with library subscriptions can likely be managed to acceptable levels if not eliminated altogether by working closely with the intermediaries who sell the subscriptions.

• The risks associated with members’ resumes may be more problematic. As indicated in the background notes that were distributed Saturday, concern about the perceived quality of Horizons and Issues is one of the factors that motivated the Executive Committee and Publications Committee to start this initiative, and these risks will be more than offset by providing an exciting new outlet for applied research and instructional development. However, it is difficult to gauge the extent to which the perceived quality of these journals will be diminished when the proposed journal replaces them. We hope to mitigate this risk by communicating to the membership that (a) This does not mean that the perceived quality of these journals is low — they have published many notable papers over the years and they have had respected and dedicated editors, editorial boards, and authors, and (2) We will do our best to communicate the change with library subscribers as a renaming.

• The short-term brand equity risks associated with new submissions could also be problematic. There are at least two ways to try to manage this risk. First, the Publications Committee can try to control it as best as possible by working with the editors of Issues and Horizons. Second, the Executive Committee has already helped reduce this risk by not delaying the decision on the new journal. This should shorten the transition period and encourage everyone involved to focus on ways to best manage the transition. As indicated earlier, concerns about delay risk greatly influenced Sunday’s decision to go forward with the new journal as soon as possible.

• We also spent considerable time addressing one of Amelia Baldwin’s questions:  Why can’t we apply whatever strategy we have in mind to insure that the proposed journal is first rate to the two existing journals? We believe that we could take steps to improve Horizons and Issues but there is at least one compelling reason why the resulting journals would not be as good as the new one: We do not believe that the two existing journals can achieve the teaching-practice-research synergies discussed earlier and thus they can not help draw us together by highlighting our common interests. We also believe that a "clean slate" and the innovative concept for the new journal will attract a deep pool of outstanding prospective editors, editorial board members, reviewers, and authors.  Again, this believe was reinforced by Saturday’s Best Practices session. We have plenty of evidence from the section and region meetings that: (a) there is a large demand for forums that offer "something exceptional for everyone" by focusing on teaching-practice-research synergies and (b) there are numerous talented AAA members who have proven that they can produce first-rate mid-year meetings to meet this demand, and by extension can likely help produce a first-rate publication that will be built on a similar concept.

• Another way to appreciate the power of capturing these synergies in a single journal is to consider the following hypothetical question. Would the sections that have had highly successful mid-year meetings have been anywhere near as successful if they had conducted separate mid-year meetings for teaching and research? Based on what I learned at Saturday’s Best Practices session, my answer is definitely not. The sections would likely not have captured these synergies and they would likely not be as unified because the mutual respect that Ann e Christensen mentioned would not have occurred.

Why not survey the membership before making a decision?

At least three of you suggested that we survey the membership. After debating this proposal extensively, the Executive Committee decided not to conduct a survey for the following reasons:

• We have already solicited input from the Council, which represents the diverse interests of the membership. I hope by now that I have convinced you that the Council’s input has had a significant productive influence on our deliberations. We have already expanded the task force to include the Chairman of the Membership Committee and Vice Chairperson of the Teaching and Curriculum Section.

• We were concerned about delaying the decision for the reasons mentioned earlier.

• We suspected that the survey results would be predictably unreliable. As Bob Libby indicated on Saturday, thus far we have met great initial resistance when we have recommended to a new audience that Horizons and Issues should be replaced with the new journal. We have met similar resistance, but to a lesser degree, when members initially see the background points, goals, and recommendations that we distributed to the Council on Saturday. However, we have also found that most members support replacing Horizons and Issues with the new journal once they debate the issues with us thoroughly and gain a better understanding of the costs, benefits, and risks of the various alternatives. These experiences lead us to conclude that the underlying issues are complex and difficult to communicate in writing. Also, even if we were to debate the issues extensively with a random sample of members, we doubt that we would learn much that we have not already learned from the Council, Publications Committee and task force. Still, the survey suggestion and the above analysis motivated us to plan a discussion forum at the annual meeting. Hopefully this forum will help members gain a better understanding of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with the proposed new journal. We also expect that attendees will help us identify additional risks and ways to manage them.

Again, I want to thank the Council for all of the valuable insights that you provided on this issue and, more generally, throughout the Saturday sessions. As we enter the implementation stage, I hope that you will help us make the new journal a great success and help us manage the transition risks. We have a great opportunity to significantly strengthen the value proposition through this journal but we must continue to work together to realize this value.

Sincerely,

Pete
Boston College
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Goodbye to my two most prized American Accounting Association journals.
Wow Bummer of the Week ---- I vote NO!

The President of the AAA, G. Peter Wilson, stated the following:

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"... we have also found that most members support replacing Horizons and Issues with the new journal once they debate the issues with us thoroughly and gain a better understanding of the costs, benefits, and risks of the various alternatives." 
President Wilson
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President Wilson also stated that: 

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After debating this proposal (to survey the AAA membership) extensively, the Executive Committee decided not to conduct a survey ..." President Wilson
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Bob Jensen's Commentary

There does not seem to be any link between President Wilson's conclusion and research. If there was no membership survey or even a systematic sample survey, how can he draw a conclusion the members really want to drop the two journals and replace them with one journal (actually Accounting Horizons content is not really intended to be replaced)?

Furthermore, I find his conclusions about costs, benefits, and risks to be heavily biased and not based upon full and fair disclosure of the facts.  My comments on this are shown below.

My perception of quality of Issues and Horizons is far different than those who perceive them as low quality.  I worry that the leadership of the AAA is getting more and more detached from the educators and teachers of accountancy in colleges around the world.  For example, I find the cases published in Issues in Accounting Education to generally be outstanding and useful to me in my teaching.  I have previously written commentaries praising these cases.  For example, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book01q3.htm#IAE  

Put me down for a NO on this decision to drop these particular important journals!

The current AAA Executive Committee is totally out of touch with the membership on this decision and is afraid to put the issue to the entire membership in a mail ballot.  I am virtually certain that it would not pass.  I imagine that the Executive Committee is afraid to poll the membership regarding the perceived usefulness of the Issues and Horizons journals to teachers of accounting vis-a-vis The Accounting Review.  

Pete Wilson refers mentions "low quality" of Horizons and Issues without providing a shred of evidence in this regard.  The Accounting Review is held out to be the premiere research journal of the AAA, but the Executive Committee does not consider the research papers important enough to even publish replications.  See "Are accounting researchers really seeking truth?" at  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book02q4.htm#Replication 

When you do comment on the AAA's Executive Committee's contention that Issues in Accounting Education has low quality content, you might note that the latest (May 2003) issue takes up a huge block of pages for Joel Demski's "The Curriculum Challenge." Joel is the immediate Past President of the AAA and is currently on the AAA's Executive Committee. I think he feels that "The Curriculum Challenge" is high quality work or he would not have given it prizes and praise (see Page 22). I note that he chose to publish this work in Issues in Accounting Education.

I might also point to Pete Wilson's publication "Teaching and Learning can be Energizing," Issues in Accounting Education, June 1999 Professor Wilson is the current President of the AAA who has expressed the greatest concern over quality of publications in that journal.

Considerations for the Cost Side of the Argument

I am astonished that anyone could suggest that this change makes financial sense.  There is a serious matching problem here -- citing cost savings without referencing revenue that will obviously be lost as a result of this decision.  The decision should stand on its academic, programmatic, or other merits, and not be buttressed by a clearly false (presumably mistaken) or incomplete and misleading financial analysis.

Dealing first with the electronic versions -- the agreement  negotiated with the company that handles the electronic publishing is on strictly a revenue-sharing basis. The electronic versions of Issues and Horizons each generated substantial revenue both from members (included in the $20-for-all-3-journals package) and nonmembers (via individual or bundled subscriptions and pay-per-view access).  There was no financial risk to the AAA in continuing the electronic versions of both these publications.

 There shouldn't be with the electronic version of the new journal, unless the AAA gets hit with another $400 "start-up fee" by the electronic publisher for the new journal -- hopefully both the electronic publisher and the US Postal Service can be persuaded that the new journal is a continuation of one of the existing ones with nothing more than a name change, or there will be some unnecessary start-up costs.  With the Postal Service, these would be substantial in the short term -- I think it took the AAA two years after Issues went quarterly before the Postal Service agreed we qualified for the lower quarterly rate and finally issued us a substantial refund.) 

Moving on to the hard-copy version:

A quote from Pete Wilson's notes says, 
"<<Without a decrease in page count, savings on printing and mailing alone should exceed $25,000 per year>>

That number cannot be considered in isolation. 

Let's assume that non-member revenue remains the same -- that is, that the subscription revenue from libraries and nonmembers for the new journal will equal the total revenue from subscriptions for Issues and Horizons combined, and that all the advertising revenue that would otherwise have gone to both existing journals now finds its way to the new journal.  I think this assumption is unlikely, given that libraries will be asked to subscribe to something new in a time when they're trying to cut back, so it's a very generous assumption indeed.

But even with that assumption, AAA members who have voted with their (or their employers') wallets have voluntarily paid more than $50,000 annually to receive EACH of these extra journals in print format (in addition to the one journal included in their base dues).  At least three-quarters paid either $10 or $20 extra to receive 2 or 3 printed journals; a strong majority of members paid $20 to receive all 3 printed journals.  And this is despite the fact that they can receive access to the electronic versions for a flat $20 fee covering all three journals.

The thought that anyone could cite in favor of this decision "savings" of $25,000 in printing and mailing costs for 2 publications that members voluntarily pay more than $100,000 to receive in hard copy on top of their one "base" journal simply boggles my mind.

If there is a case to be made for this change, it is not financial and I am surprised that Pete, of all people, would cite this "savings" to buttress the logic behind the decision. 

Historically, the AAA had recorded the member revenue related to the selection of extra journals under "dues" rather than under "journals" -- a point that I or the VP-Finance had to explain at each meeting when we looked at the financial statements -- but I thought we had fixed that in 2002. Perhaps that change came un-done, so that Pete forgot or did not understand that the $25,000 savings cited for printing and mailing costs is dwarfed by the amount that has each year been voluntarily paid by or on behalf of members who selected each of these two "extra" journals in addition to the base one included within their dues? Otherwise citing the savings without referencing the foregone revenue does not reflect the transparency that Pete always emphasized as being so important when dealing with members.

When looking only at the hard-copy versions, each of the three journals was consistently profitable once you allocated the additional $10 or $20 voluntarily paid by the large majority of members who wished to receive hard-copy issues of more than one journal. The financial equation is even better once 25% or more of members also paid $20 for a year's access to electronic versions of all 3 journals. As I've noted, except for a one-time $400 set-up fee for each journal, there is NO additional cost to the AAA of producing the electronic versions -- we use the same Postcript/pdf files that go to the hard-copy printer for the electronic versions and no longer do any additional processing for the electronic versions as we did when we handled the first 8 electronic journals totally in-house. (This is why you can't "hot-key" to and from the footnotes any more -- that capability was beyond the capacity of the electronic publisher, but it also saved us $3 per page in internal processing costs that we incurred when we offered that capability in our earlier internally hosted electronic versions.) The AAA retains $15 of the $20 paid by members for electronic access to the three association-wide journals, and also gets 75% of any money from pay-per-article or nonmember or library subscribers who select the electronic versions.

Even without allocating any of the extra member revenue for hard-copies -- pretending that the $10 or $20 were voluntary donations by members without recognizing that they were actually purchasing more hard-copy journals -- the three journals as a set were always profitable, though this appeared to be only because of TAR. Largely because of its much higher set of library subscribers, TAR appeared to be subsidizing the other two journals -- but only when you ignored the voluntary purchases of a second or third printed journal by a large majority of members.

Allotments for editorial support were always MUCH higher for The Accounting Review than for Horizons and Issues; although the AAA made some progress toward equalizing these at least at the budget stage, certain recent AAA presidents were quite explicit that we should do anything possible to pump more resources to The Accounting Review (TAR) --- at the same time they almost ejected an editor of one of the other journals who stayed under the allocated budget but spent some of the funds in unanticipated budget categories.

And lastly on the cost/revenue side of things (and related somewhat to what Kate says below), has the Executive Committee really thought about what will be the impact of the lost subscriptions to the Horizons and Issues journals?  It has taken years to build up those subscription revenues, especially in libraries.  If the AAA Executive Committee really decides to replace these journals with a new journal, it may be very hard to build up the lost revenue with new subscriptions, especially in this disaster era for college and library budgets.

Political Considerations

Let's now focus on the Nominations Committee that in reality controls the direction of the main body of the American Accounting Association.  It consists of the 3 most recent past presidents willing to serve and 4 members selected by the non-Executive-Committee members of Council at the meeting that occurred just over a week ago. I don't know who they selected, but this was clearly the opportunity the Sections and Regions have to select the future leadership of the AAA. There was one President who changed the selection process in the middle of the voting because that President didn't like the way it was going, and the next President argued publicly with his Secretary/Treasurer in the middle of the voting process on what the selection process would be. 

The bottom line is that, if Section and Region representatives don't elect 4 commonly minded Nominations Committee members, there is a large likelihood that the past Presidents will control the meeting. And there are reports that most of them do exercise that control.   

It only takes 100 signatures to force a contested election by petition, and the one time that was tried the Nominations Committee designate only won by 7 votes.  Since it is an electronic/fax/mail-in ballot, those who do not attend the Annual Meeting are no longer disenfranchised.

Please don't give up on the AAA. Always remember many good things come to us from the AAA. The AAA formally recognizes sections, publishes section journals, and dedicates annual meeting time slots to sections. There are geographic regions and regional meetings as well. What you get out depends upon what you put into all of these constituencies.

The AAA can be as much or as little as we want it to be if we stay involved and informed. If there are things you do not like about governance rules and procedures, there are processes for changing these rules and procedures. I think that we should have some voting choices like exist in other academic associations such as the Financial Management Association (FMA). Think about possibly working toward this goal.

If and when you raise a concern, please be courteous and factual. Our AAA leaders are dedicated volunteers. I know some of you are not happy with the way the present Executive Committee reached a decision (which may be rescinded by the incoming Executive Committee) to drop the Horizons and Issues journals. You should voice your unhappiness with the right degree of facts and the right degree of courtesy and respect. Please take care as to when and how you try to voice your concerns if you want to be heard. But eventually do make yourself heard!

On the AECM we can drift and go off-the-wall. The AAA Executive Committee probably does not understand this since virtually none of them contribute to our discussions.

I guess I am rambling too much, so I'll quit for now. I remain a loyal member of the AAA and am proud of the way it has become respected around the world as a community of accounting scholars. No organization is perfect, but in balance this is a great organization.

Hang in there Mary E.

Bob Jensen
Trinity University

AAA Executive Committee Members:

I wish to ask the Executive Council to reconsider the proposal to eliminate Issues in Accounting Education and Accounting Horizons and to start a new journal. According to a report by Tracey Sutherland, 4,167 or 54.8% of AAA members subscribe to all three journals, 947 to The Accounting Review only, 348 to Accounting Horizons only, and 943 to Issues in Accounting Education only. These figures indicate that a large portion of AAA members value all three journals. Of those individuals who choose to subscribe to only one journal, there is not a meaningful difference in the number choosing The Review and the number choosing Issues. With a 10 to 17 percent manuscript acceptance rate at Issues, a steady supply of submissions, and an extensive subscriber list, Issues appears to be well supported.

The AAA is quite concerned about declining membership. At such times, it is important to ensure that the organization is perceived as inclusive. In addition to AAA members employed at research oriented schools, many of our members are employed at teaching oriented schools. Another segment of AAA members are in the practice community. If we wish to maintain and grow the AAA membership in all these segments, we should continue to have three journals that appeal to our broad constituencies. In addition, moving from publishing three journals to two journals is likely to create the perception that there are fewer opportunities to publish in AAA journals. I worry that increasing the AAA dues and simultaneously decreasing the number of AAA journals will exacerbate the decline in AAA membership. Further, untenured individuals who have published in Horizons or Issues may find that those publications are valued less in the tenure process because the respective journals are no longer in existence. Before eliminating two journals and creating a new journal, at a minimum there should be a vote of the membership to determine their preferences.

Thank you for considering my request.

Sincerely,

Anne Christensen 
College of Business Montana State University 
443 Reid Hall PO Box 173040 Bozeman, MT 597171 
406-994-2043 406-994-6206 (fax) annec@montana.edu 

AAA Executive Committee Members:

I request you reverse your decision to cancel Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education. In my opinion, the executive committee's handling of this issue was inappropriate. I think the decision was based on the views of a small sample, but the problem is that the sample wasn't random! If the overriding issue is quality, I think that at the very least you should provide solid evidence to support your contention. If the overriding issue is cost, I have a few suggestions:

Cost of publishing journals/newsletters Put all the journals out for bid. I just learned that AAA thinks that publishing JATA costs $80,000. That number seems high to me, and I would like to request the costs of publishing all the journals be made public to the AAA membership, including how the costs are allocated among the journals. Regarding newsletters, ATA is fully capable of publishing its own newsletters on its server. AAA's concern about quality should not apply to a newsletter.

Reimbursement policies What are reimbursement policies for AAA officers, board members, committee members etc? For example, the ATA does not permit any travel expense reimbursement (hotel, food, transportation) to be paid for members with ATA funds. In addition, all hotel comp rooms are used for speakers. No benefit inures to ATA members. I( was amazed that the Hilton, where the ATA Midyear Meeting was held this year, actually thought that it was common policy for an organization's officers to have a suite of rooms.) Our reimbursement policy saves ATA a lot of money.

Food costs at annual meeting Cancel one of the luncheons and cancel one of the receptions. I bet most members don't attend both luncheons. Food costs for a meeting are enormous, and surely there are some cost savings to be had. If you tell members why you are doing it, most members will be sympathetic. If there ever was a year to scale back, this is the year.

Photographer costs Cancel the photographer. Surely there is a member who can take electronic pictures. Very few pics show up in the AAA newsletter anyway, so why do we incur the cost?

AV costs I was surprised at the high AV costs that will be incurred by those of us presenting CPE sessions. These are the regular AV costs. Why isn't AAA negotiating a deal? At the ATA Midyear Meeting, we were able to save money by including all AV costs in one package.

Once the membership has a chance to see the detailed costs incurred to run our large organization, I'm sure that more cost-cutting moves can be suggested. For example, I think the membership would prefer to have annual meeting costs reduced rather than eliminating journals. If you have any doubt, please poll the membership. Give us a say in our organization.

Amy Dunbar 
University of Connecticut

Professor Jim Largay, Editor of Accounting Horizons, is pleased to announce that Horizons is receiving the Emerald Management Reviews’ (EMR) 2003 Golden Page Award for “Readability of Research” in the Accounting and Finance journal category. Based in the UK, Emerald publishes 150 journals. In addition, each year it evaluates articles in the top 400 management periodicals in the world in six research and readability areas. Specialist reviewers examine over 18,000 articles each year and EMR recognizes the highest-ranked journal in each functional management category, such as accounting and finance, general management, marketing, and operations and production management, with Golden Page Awards in one or more of the six research and readability areas. Other journals honored with 2003 Golden Page Awards include Financial Management, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Strategic Marketing, and Management Science.

Professor Largay is attending the April 24 Awards Ceremony in London to receive the Award on behalf of Accounting Horizons and the American Accounting Association. He is gratified by this award and wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Horizons' Associate Editors, external referees, authors of published manuscripts, and of course his own green pen, that make Horizons the accessible widely-read research journal that came to the attention of the Golden Page award Evaluators.

March 31, 2003

Re: An Open Letter to the Members of the American Accounting Association regarding Need for a Vote on Journals of the Association

From: Wanda A. Wallace

Last week I became aware of the following accounts of recent events in our Association:

1. The Executive Committee had voted unanimously to abolish two of the three journals of the Association and to create a new journal as a replacement.
2. The decision of the Executive Committee was to be implemented without a membership vote, although the Executive Committee Members were well aware that substantial resistance had been expressed--by constituencies who had been approached by a past committee and recently by Council.
3. Neither editor of the two journals to be abolished had even been informed of the deliberations, let alone the Executive Committee decision--indeed recent announcements have included the selection of a new editor for one of these journals.
4. Both internally inconsistent and contradictory representations have been made about the basis for the decision and, importantly, the rationale for not permitting the membership a vote.
   

After receiving the above news and contemplating what action might be appropriate, I decided to write this open letter to fellow members of the American Accounting Association and to request the Executive Director of the AAA to forward it to all members of the AAA to ensure (a) that they are made aware of the situation in a timely manner and (b) they consider the propriety of demanding a membership vote be taken on such an important initiative.

In my view, an academic association of professors in a learned discipline has a number of responsibilities. One of these missions is to establish and responsibly operate independent forums for peer review and publication of contributions to the literature. Over twenty years ago, the leaders and members of the Association recognized the three-legged stool commitment to research, education, and service. Moreover, a value was placed on (a) pure academic research dialogue within the profession, (b) a forum for education-related research and associated educational resources, as well as debates associated with education, and (c) a means of sharing the results of research that addresses both practice and policy questions in a rigorous venue that takes a form that can be read by a much broader community than the academy.

My understanding is that two well-established journals have been summarily abolished by the Executive Committee and a unilateral decision made to create a different single journal with a mission of blending research, education, and practice in one forum. My personal reaction is threefold. First, The Accounting Review for years tried to serve all three audiences, and it was the inability to do so effectively and sufficiently that led, in part, to the creation of the additional two journals. Second, the pages of Association-wide journals are already severely limited relative to our world-wide membership and a decrease in that available forum, given very severe acceptance rates in all of our outlets, would not be in keeping with the Association's responsibility of maintaining independent journal space. Third, I know of no barrier to developing departments within all three existing journals that explore the interface of research, teaching, and service--integrating policy and practice considerations. Indeed, much could be gained from permitting cooperation among the three editors on the unique manuscripts that are apparently in the "mind's eye" of Executive members. A call for papers, a statement of those papers' placement--perhaps across the three journals--and even a creative role for a synergistic editor who worked with the three journal editors, could build on a strong foundation. The Executive Committee need not raze that which has been created and nurtured by the broad membership in order to pursue their stated interests.

I have never believed that critical planks of a not-for-profit membership-based association should ever be decided solely by a small group of Executive members, or even a broader Council. Membership votes are essential to ensure that the paths navigated are in accordance with those to whom the Association is committed. All of us should reflect on the events over the past few years of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Consider the representations made by the leaders of the Association regarding the 'XYZ' Certification and the very clear and decisive position of the members--at total odds with the leadership's assertions. I suggest that a formal vote on the question as to whether the existing journals should be abolished and whether a new journal should be established is both prudent and essential.

Wanda Wallace
College of William and Mary

My position, which I expressed at the meeting, was that we should go back to the old days and publish everything in The Accounting Review. With electronic publishing capabilities and even with modern print technologies, there is no reason why TAR cannot be published 6 or 8 times per year like AOS, CPA, or AAAJ. TAR could have sections for education, commentary, etc. We could publish everything under our flagship journal (like we used to) and save considerable money as a result. Here is where our forgetting of history inhibits our ability to see beyond this being merely an issue of eliminating the two journals. Why do we have these two in the first place? We have them because JAR and JAE were perceived by the "intellectual elite" as threatening the status of TAR. The AAA serves largely as the instrument by which accounting academics earn scholarly reputations -- the principal currency of academe (some of you out there are likely familiar with the work of Pierre Bourdeau, for example). Every academic discipline is organized; they are societies of scholars with complex mechanisms for deciding who among them are the most "successful." Those societies that are the most "open" (bow to Carl Popper) are the most "progressive." For example, the achievements of biology over the last 50 years (since Watson and Crick) are, to say the least, astonishing. In the sociology of science literature we note that the key to academic success in biology is driven largely by the ability to establish a successful lab, regardless of where you "went to school." Of course, among all of the hard sciences, one's politics are irrelevant to academic success. 

The AAA is our structure; it is decidedly not an "open society", but a very, very closed society. The "empirical evidence" (which we are led to believe is the only thing that we are to base our beliefs upon) is compelling on this issue and I will provide a reading list for anyone who is genuinely interested in understanding something about why these events are taking place. The structure of the AAA makes it the last remaining Politburo on earth. TAR, our journal, has been taken away from from the members by a group of folks who unilaterally declared themselves to be our intellectual superiors and proclaimed that an uncritical parroting of our superiors in academe (new classical economists and monetarist financiers) is the key to academic success (a tried and true formula of the one eyed man is king in the land of the blind). Robert Heilbroner remarked that mathematics brought great rigor to economics, unfortunately, he noted, it also brought mortis (thus we have to reinvigorate accounting scholarship; well, who anesthetized it in the first place?). 

The AAA exists so that we can pay our $135 dues (yes, they will go up by $50) to subsidize a system for creating politically correct academic reputations access to which is precluded for most of the people paying the tax. The AAA's financial troubles are to no small extent attributable to this system of subsidization. At the Council meeting, we were also informed about the results of a "cost study" to determine what the cost of services are that the AAA headquarters provides to sections and regions. My advice to you is to keep your eyes open on this effort, too. There is money in section and region coffers (the only part of the AAA prospering). There was a great deal of effort put into this analysis, but the analysis is faulty because it presumed that over half a million dollars of AAA expenditures were "Association costs," from which we allegedly all benefit (TAR is included in this amount). The cost structure of the AAA has to be understood in light of what goal(s) created it. Nothing can be taken for granted!! 

If the AAA is a closed system for creating politically correct academic reputations, then, before we can conclude what the sections and regions "cost," we need to reassess whether the goals of the AAA are really what we want to pay to achieve. The response to the proposed elimination of ISSUES and HORIZONS suggests that they are not. The reason we used to make college students study the classics was in the belief that there was "ancient wisdom." The tragedies that befell protagonists in Greek tragedies were invariably the result of hubris. The continuing "financial tragedy" of the AAA is simply an old lesson relearned. 

Paul Williams paul_williams@ncsu.edu 
North Carolina State University

March 31, 2003 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU] 

Paul and Amy,

In a sense, I agree with both of you.

I liked the politburo metaphor (I probably would have preferred a junta or a pilates metaphor better, considering the ridiclous weight placed on some of these journals in tenure evaluations).

The main problem is the greasy pole (apologies to Benjamin Disraeli) established by tar, whereby everyone aspires to reach the "top" of the greasy pole if only to proclaim having done it, as Disraeli did. I have published in one of the so-called top journals, but would be ashamed to proclaim to have reached the top of the greasy pole. Even to date I feel nausea when people refer to that paper as the evidence of my credibility as a "scholar". We need to distinguish between research and scholarship.

Paul's proposal, which I like very much, gets rid of this ridiculous divinely inspired (or politically conspired?) hierarchy of journals. There is no reason we can not do what many other organisations do: to have one umbrella populist journal and either one or a bunch of journals ALL OF WHICH ARE CONSIDERED PEERS (EQUALS). ACM and IEEE for example have Communications/Spectrum/Computer for the former, and a bunch of Transactions for the latter.

As for the democracy bit, let me add to the chorus. I am a member of about half a dozen societies, and AAA is VERY special in that it is the least democrartic, and arguably the most pretentiously scholarly organisation I have had an occasion of being a part of. It is the only association from which I do not receive the ballot. I feel disenfranchised.

If I am not mistaken, even the editor of the tar used to be an elected position once upon a time, until AAA moved to the smoky rooms for transacting its business.

I hope we all begin to practice what we have been preaching from our rooftops to the rest of the world: democracy.

Respectfully submitted,

Jagdish

April 11, 2003 Reply from Dan Stone

I have some modest proposals for the AAA that are partially in response to the recent journal decision fiasco:

1. The accounting review should be a monthly publication, should be expanded to twice it's current size, and should include associate editors who are appointed by each of the sections of the AAA. The editor's position should be elected by a vote of the AAA membership. The purpose of this proposal is to reflect the diversity and excellence of the ENTIRE AAA membership.

2. Nominations for AAA leadership should come exclusively from member nominations. All those nominated for positions should be voted on by the membership. (Note that this approach includes the current method of insider only nominations).

Now..... who is with me? How can we make these proposals happen?

Dan Stone
University of Kentucky

April 11, 2003 Reply from Paul Williams

Dan, et al, In answer to your question about how we accomplish what you suggest is probably most effectively done by amending the AAA bylaws. I believe with the discontent being expressed over this most recent journals decision, it should not be difficult to get the signatures necessary to put proposed bylaw changes before the membership. Somewhere in my files, I already have the wording of a bylaw change that would require competitive elections for the Executive Committee, which almost passed the last time it was put before the members. As you will recall it was that effort to change the bylaws that prompted Joe Schultz to investigate governance and actually propose some steps toward contested elections. His successor as president threw all of that in the bin and nothing has happened since. A change calling for the direct election of the editor of TAR (who, by the way, has always been a graduate of one of the "persistent 14" elite schools) can be fairly easily drafted. The apathy of the membership has been exploited for years by the insiders to create a reputational system that excludes the interests of most accounting academics (and practitioners as well). I suggest the members quite complaining about this decision; it is just a more egregious example of the way decisions in the AAA have always been made (the process always reminds of the BBC series "The Old Men at the Zoo"). Discontent should not be with this one particular decision, but with the underlying process by which it was made. If you don't want this to happen to you again, you have to change the process. 

Go for it Dan. 
PFW
North Carolina State University

April 11, 2003 Added Reply from Paul Williams

Per your request: the persistent 14 are Illinois, Ohio State, Stanford, Texas, Minnesota, Washington (U of) Rochester, Chicago, Mich. State, Mich., Berkeley, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Iowa and to add a 15th Wisconsin. Penn is a school that has recently emerged in prominance. It may seem unremarkable, but it is remarkable when one looks at how graduates of these schools dominate the ability to decide the scholarly agenda. By chance, one would think that occasionally some unsuspecting accounting genius would venture to graduate from a non-elite school and succeed (after all, logit analyses of financial statements isn't exactly string theory). But that has not happened; the data are clear on this. For those interested see:

Williams and Rodgers, "The Accounting Review and the Production of Accounting Knowledge," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1995, v. 6, 263-287.

Rodgers and Williams, "Patterns of Research Productivity and Knowledge Creation at The Accounting Review: 1967 - 1993," The Accounting Historians Journal, June, 1996, 51 - 88.

Lee and Williams, "Accounting from the Inside: Legitimizing the Accounting Academic Elite," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1999, v. 10, 867 - 895.

In conjunction with the above see, Brown, L.D. "Influential Accounting Articles, Individuals, Ph.D. Granting Institutions and Faculties: A Citational Analysis," AOS, 1966, 723 -754 (there is not one dominant paper published in the 3 U.S. premier journals that is theoretical -- accounting theory died in the U.S. 35 years ago. All of the papers are empirical, i.e., tests relying on theories that don't belong to us). In that same issue of AOS, see Lukka and Kasanen, "Is Accounting a Global or a Local Discipline? Evidence from Major Research Journals" 755 - 773. (don't be surprised, it isn't global)

We live in a very closed society; Bob's analogy with the Republican Guard is spot on! PFW

PFW
North Carolina State University

 

The Executive Committee of the American Accounting Association has voted to eliminate two of the Association’s journals: Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education. The intention of the Executive Committee is to create a new journal. This new journal will not be a merger of Horizons and Issues but will start with a clean slate. It is expected that many items in the new journal will be similar to those in Horizons and Issues.

I have just returned from the American Accounting Association Southeast Regional Meeting. The journal decision was the topic of discussion during several sessions. At the Accounting Journal Editors Panel, Tom Howard, present editor of Issues, reported no one from the Executive Board has discussed this journal decision with him. He learned of the decision only six days prior to the SEAAA meeting. Marshall Geiger, the associate editor of Horizons, found out about the decision upon arriving at the SEAAA meeting and only two hours prior to his panel presentation.

At the AAA Southeast Regional Business Meeting, the journal decision was discussed by the members. Bill Felix, AAA President Elect, answered questions during the journal discussion. Subsequently, the members attending that meeting voted unanimously for the following resolution: The members of the Southeastern Region of the American Accounting Association are disappointed with the Executive Committee’s journal decision and would like the Executive Committee to reconsider their journal decision after receiving input from AAA members..

I have been appointed as Chairperson of a committee to follow up on the journal decision. Since there are several AAA regional meeting coming up, I felt that it is necessary to quickly disseminate information to the members to allow for open and informed discussion. I have attached two PDF files to this email message. The first file is entitled “Recommendations on the Association-Wide Journals,” dated March 3, 2003. The second file is Association President G. Peter Wilson’s summary of the Association-wide journals recommendation, dated March 23, 2003.

In the Recommendations (first PDF file), it is stated that educational research submission to Issues have dropped dramatically in recent years. Tom Howard reported submissions to Issues has remained steady at approximately 100 submissions per year for each of the past five years. He reported an acceptance rate of 17%.

Prior studies have shown Horizons and Issues are highly regarded journals. Both journals rank among the top 25 Accounting journals. Unfortunately, a ranking study of journals has not been completed in 10 years. A composite ranking of five previous journal surveys is presented as part of a publication study that is forthcoming in Advances in Accounting. A copy of this paper is available on my web site: www.jrhasselback.com. Click on “Articles” in the left column and then click on “Prolific Authors.”

In the President’s Summary (second PDF file) discusses Council’s involvement in the journal decision. The Council did not take a vote on the journal proposal. Several members of Council appear not to be in favor of the journal proposal. The Executive Committee then met and voted for the journal proposal. Two Council members have reported to me that they thought that Council input was ignored.

I hope to share any further information I receive with the AAA membership.

Jim Hasselback
Florida State University

March 30, 2003 Reply from Dennis Beresford (former Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board)

I was informed about this decision a few days ago by Jim Largay, the current editor of Accounting Horizons. I found it interesting that the Executive Committee did not inform Jim that this matter was even under consideration until after the decision had been made. In fact, even after that Jim received the word indirectly.

I've been a member of the editorial board of Accounting Horizons since its inception. And I've been proud to serve as an Associate Editor during the past three years under Jim Largay's leadership. Throughout its history, I think that Horizons has done a very good job of helping to bridge the gap between educators and practitioners, as was one of its original and main purposes. I've also been proud to have had several articles published in Horizons over the years (I hope that that isn't what led the AAA leadership to the conclusion that quality wasn't as high as they wished!).

Bob Jensen forwarded in the message above just the portion of President Wilson's notes that related to the journal matter. I found it interesting that in another part of those notes that wasn't forwarded by Bob, President Wilson pointed out the great idea of having practitioners make regular presentations to regional meetings of AAA and other similar meetings. It seems somewhat ironic to me that this enthusiasm to have practitioners contribute to those sessions comes at the same time as the principal journal that attempts to bridge the educator/practitioner gap is being abolished.

In addition to contributing to Horizons and reading it regularly (as a practitioner, a standard setter, and now an educator), I've found the archives of articles to be very useful reading for my students. For example, articles by Professor Zeff on the economic consequences of accounting standards and by Professor Samuelson on the determination of liabilities are better than anything else written on these topics, in my view. They are just as valuable to my students in this semester's classes as they were when I first read them many years ago. The Accounting Review certainly contributes greatly in its way, but it really isn't useful to the vast majority of students. Horizons seems to be the only forum in which professional/technical issues can be analyzed and debated by excellent accounting thinkers.

I also enjoy reading Issues in Accounting Education, as it is a way for me, as a relatively new educator, to learn about interesting new ways to reach my students. The book reviews are particularly valuable to me as well.

As a final note, I share the concern that some other AECMers have already expressed about the process by which this decision was reached. President Wilson says that the Executive Committee concluded that any further input would be predictably unreliable. And the Committee also doubts that they would learn much. Putting aside the pure arrogance of those comments, I've always thought that the AAA went overboard to encourage input and debate before making important changes like these. In fact, the Association has been criticized for moving too slowly on some matters because of this.

The FASB might have concluded on several occasions that it was sufficient, for example, to discuss a topic with its Advisory Council and not expose it for comment by all constituents. That would have been a violation of the FASB's rules of procedure. More importantly, it would have been a terrible judgment that the people who are affected by such an important decision are not entitled to participate in its outcome.

Denny Beresford 
University of Georgia

I have prepared a comment on the recent decision to eliminate Issues and Horizons. Dan Stone tells me that you have created a place for those of us with an opinion on the matter to chime in. I am attaching my comment for inclusion if you think it appropriate.

Thanks.

Thomas P. Howard 
PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor and Director, 
Von Allmen School of Accountancy 
University of Kentucky

A Comment on Recent Actions of the Executive Committee of the AAA
Thomas P. Howard, Editor, Issues in Accounting Education

The Executive Committee of the American Accounting Association (AAA) recently voted to discontinue publication of two Association-wide journals, Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education, and to replace them with a single journal that would publish applied and educational scholarship and educational materials.  Two documents relating to that decision have recently gained wide distribution.  Those documents are the “Recommendations on the Association-Wide Journals” by a AAA Task Force (TF) and the “Follow-up to the St. Louis Meeting” by Pete Wilson. 

After a careful reading of both documents and following numerous telephone conversations and email exchanges with members of the TF and attendees at the Spring Council Meeting, I conclude that the Executive Committee made a very bad decision, based on a TF report containing errors and highly debatable “observations” and that both the decision and the TF report resulted from an ill conceived and indefensible process.  Furthermore, I’m concerned that the leadership of the AAA is no longer connected to the overwhelming majority of the membership of the AAA.

The Task Force

At the annual meeting of the AAA held last August, word leaked out that the Executive Committee was considering eliminating Issues in Accounting Education.  The original responsibility for making that happen fell to the Publications Committee.  That committee met twice to discuss the matter.  A potential problem of a political nature came up, however, since no one on the Publications Committee had ever published in Issues or shown the slightest interest in the journal.  To overcome this, a Task Force was formed that included members of the Publications Committee, but also included a few individuals with a history of involvement with the journal.  Had the newly constituted TF been allowed to proceed, and had the charge been to review all association-wide journals, perhaps something positive would have resulted.  Unfortunately, the TF never met (its “deliberations” were limited to a one-hour conference call) and the charge was not to review the journals, it was to eliminate one or more of them.  One of the TF members who was added to represent those of us with an interest in Issues told me that his total involvement consisted of the single conference call, that he never saw the report until well after the Executive Committee had voted, and that had he seen a draft of the document, he would have disagreed with several of its “observations”. 

The Task Force Report

Since the TF recommendations were the basis for the actions of the Executive Committee, and the sole basis for the discussion held at the Council meeting of March 15, it is important that they be examined.  To the extent that the TF recommendations were based on erroneous information, it calls into question the decision reached based on those recommendations.  It is worth noting that no one on the Publications Committee or the Task Force ever contacted the editors, former editors, members of the editorial boards, or anyone else associated with either Accounting Horizons or Issues in Accounting Education to verify the “observations” on which they based their recommendations. 

The following observations seem reasonable to me.  TF “observations” are shown in quotes, my comments follow and are not in quotes:

1. “The Accounting Review (hereafter, TAR) is the premier basic scholarship journal of the association. TAR is doing very well now, growing in submissions and perceived quality.”  I agree.  Further, I believe this is primarily due to the actions of the immediate past editor who opened the door to a broad range of scholarship and got away from the previous notion that research was defined by a narrow band of methodology.
2. “The section journals are focused primarily on basic and applied scholarship, and many are doing quite well.”  A fair statement, although it is bit gratuitous, since these journals were not part of the charge (i.e., Association-wide journals).

7. “The best articles published in Horizons have tended to be commentaries and integrative applications of research to current accounting issues.  Many of these papers are used in the classroom.”  I am not sure of the point being made here, however I believe the observation is true and, accordingly, I commend Horizons.
8. “The current print format of Issues limits the publication of innovations that incorporate technology, especially web-based technology.”  The current print format is imposed in Sarasota , not by either journal.  Both journals would more than welcome changes.

10. “The majority of AAA members have strong interests in applied research and instructional development.”  Amen, brother.  I might have used the phrase “overwhelming majority,” but this conveys the thought.  That is what makes the decision to eliminate journals devoted to these areas reprehensible.

There are, however, five “observations” that I think need discussion:

3. “Issues runs an annual deficit of approximately $40,000 and $20,000, in 2001 and 2002 (per the last budget report).  More data on this is pending the report of the Transfer Pricing Task Force.”  First, the reason for the new task force is that everyone agrees that the last budget report (and several preceding it), were unreliable.  The fact is that neither the revenue allocation process nor the cost allocation process that produced the reports have been explained by anyone I have spoken with.  Certainly using the numbers included in the TF as the basis for a decision is premature, at best.  Second, a number of members of the AAA will tell you that the primary benefits they get from membership are the journals.  Part of the difficulty with the revenue allocation scheme as it now exists is that it under allocates the portion of dues that should go toward the journals.  Put another way, if you eliminate the journals, you may well eliminate the only reason some members have for joining the AAA and invite them to drop their membership.

4. “Issues and to a lesser extent Horizons are sorely lacking in submissions.”  This is untrue.  Issues has had a steady state of 100 submission annually for several years.  “This has resulted in the first three issues of both journals for 2002 having an average page count of approximately 100 pages.”  Wrong again.  When I assumed the editorship I instituted the policy of making all teaching notes available on line.  Previously, teaching notes were published in the journal.  Anyone taking the time to become familiar with instructional materials would realize that often the number of pages taken up by the teaching notes greatly exceeds the number of pages of the instructional material itself.  For example, a case might be 10 pages in length, while the related teaching notes are 20 pages in length.  In short, had I not changed the policy, the average number of pages in recent issues would have been much higher, but the usefulness of the material would have been much less.  Finally, I think it is illogical in the first place to assume a relationship between the number of pages and the number of submissions, since the number of pages is more closely related to acceptance rate than it is to submission rate.
5. “Issues is perceived to be the weakest of the three association-wide publications in terms of quality of content and perceived stature in academe.”  The obvious question is “perceived by whom?”  What is the source of these data?  There are a number of studies that have Issues as the highest ranked education outlet available.  When judged on its own terms and against its own mission, there is no higher ranked journal.  What then is the basis for this unsupported statement?  The TF explains, “… few highly respected academics publish in Issues.”  If one accepts this statement as true, and I don’t, then I would ask the question, How can you be considered a highly respected academic and not have been willing to share your thoughts, ideas, and educational innovations with your fellow members of the academy?  For the last 20 years the most established and respected forum for doing so has been Issues in Accounting Education.  I think a more reasonable statement would be, Some highly respected academics have confined their scholarly activities to contributions to basic research, others to applied research, and still others to educational research.  A select few highly respected academics have published in two or, in a few rare instances, all three areas, and they are to be particularly commended.  I would hope everyone would agree that the statement of the TF is, at best, highly offensive, and should never have been the basis for concluding that Issues lacked quality.  “As a consequence, it has been difficult in recent years to solicit good editors candidates for Issues (and to a lesser extent Horizons) …”  The reason for the difficulty is that the Publications Committee confined their search to “highly respected academics” as defined by themselves.  A phone call to the current or recent past editors of either journal would spark a long list of highly respected academics (as I define them) who have demonstrated an interest in the area, and who would do a superb job.  But as was the case with the TF report, apparently the last place the Publication Committee would think to seek input from is from those of us in a position to know.

6. “Educational research submissions to Issues have dropped dramatically in recent years, and the focus has turned to teaching materials related to current issues.”  Research submissions have not dropped; instructional materials submissions have increased, and this is a cause for celebration.  Every so-called Blue Ribbon panel for the last 15 years has urged accounting academics to produce “teaching materials related to current issues” and we have responded!  The Publications Committee charged my predecessor, David Stout, with the responsibility of increasing the quantity of these materials.  Accounting educators have responded to calls from Blue Ribbon Panels, and editors have responded to the charge of the Publications Committee, and that is now being cited as a reason to eliminate the journal. 

9. “There are several other published journals in accounting with an education focus.  All of these seem to have the same difficulties with quality and quantity of submissions that Issues does.”  Here we go again.  What is the evidence supporting this observation?  Seems to whom?  Given the financial concerns of the TF that were previously noted, it is interesting that the other journals referred to are all proprietary in nature and are happily staying in business and earning a profit. 

The Process

As objectionable as I find the TF report and resulting Executive Committee decision, the aspect of this situation that I find the most appalling is the process that was employed.  The TF conference call was on March 3rd and the vote of the Executive Committee was on March 16^th!  Thirteen days start to finish.  The question raised by at least one member of the TF and by at least three members of the Council, and, frankly, dictated by common sense is “Why not survey members before making a decision on a matter of so much concern to the membership?”  Professor Wilson explains:

• “We have already solicited input from the Council, which represents the diverse interests of the membership.”  Actually, the TF report was presented to the Council, but no action was invited.  Several Council members expressed concerns with the report and its recommendations, but this is not noted.
• “We have already expanded the task force to include the Chairman of the Membership Committee and Vice Chairperson of the Teaching and Curriculum Section.”  As already pointed out, input from these two people was limited to participation in a one-hour conference call.  As was the case with the Council, concerns expressed during the conference call were not noted.
• “We suspected that the survey results would be predictably unreliable.”  Translation:  if we ask the members they are going to tell us no.  “As Bob Libby indicated on Saturday, thus far we have met great initial resistance when we have recommended to a new audience that Horizons and Issues should be replaced with the new journal.”  Translation:  the membership doesn’t understand what is in its own best interest; fortunately we are here to protect them.  “We have met similar resistance, but to a lesser degree, when members initially see the background points, goals, and recommendations that we distributed to the Council on Saturday.”  Translation:  the “observations” included in the TF.  “However, we have also found that most members support replacing Horizons and Issues with the new journal once they debate the issues with us thoroughly and gain a better understanding of the costs, benefits, and risks of the various alternatives.”  Translation:  this has been so obvious to us that we have never felt the need to actually ask an audience to officially register their opinion.  “These experiences lead us to conclude that the underlying issues are complex and difficult to communicate in writing.”  Translation:  We could never compose a survey instrument that would convince the membership that this was a good idea, so we are going to skip that step.  “Also, even if we were to debate the issues extensively with a random sample of members, we doubt that we would learn much that we have not already learned from the Council, Publications Committee and task force.”  Translation:  our minds are made up, and nothing anyone could say can convince us we are wrong.

An alternate proposal

Goals:  Same as TF except for the last sentence fragment of goal number 5 (…as well as the periodic deficit in submissions).

Recommendation:

Whereas the overwhelming majority of members consider the three Association-wide journals to be the primary benefit of membership in the American Accounting Association, and

Whereas all three journals have a well established reputation for quality in their respective areas, i.e., basic, applied, and instructional scholarship, therefore

Let it be resolved that the Association take whatever steps are necessary to allow the journals to prosper and flourish.

Discussion: 

The financial condition of the journals is unclear at this time.  Reported deficits may well be the result of improper cost and revenue allocation and that possibility is now under investigation.  If, in the future, it is determined that the journals are in financial difficulty, the Executive Committee should take immediate action to resolve that difficulty so that the journals can continue.  Possible remedies include, but are not limited to:

• Consider having Issues and Horizons adopt a semiannual publishing frequency staggered so that one of them is published each quarter.  This would result in reducing the number of issues from eight to four, and have a financial impact similar to replacing the two journals with another journal, while allowing each journal to retain its unique niche in its respective area.
• Consider increasing the subscription rate for each journal by $1 per issue thus generating an additional $25,000 in revenues.
• Consider reducing costs in another area.  For example, elimination of one staff position would result in savings exceeding $25,000.

Other possibilities exist and can be found if the agenda is to save the journals, not eliminate them.

I had a feeling, based on rumors at last year's annual meeting, that something like this was going to happen. This decision is particularly insulting to me (as immediate past editor) and the current editor of Issues (Tom Howard)--neither of us was consulted in any way prior to the decision. It would be interesting to know whether Jim Largay, current editor of Accounting Horizons, was consulted. What does this tell AAA members about the decision-making process of its Executive Committee?

Those who know me know that I have devoted most of my academic energies to the conduct and promotion of accounting education research. When I assumed the editorship of Issues, my primary pledge to the Publications Committee was to increase the quality of the journal--to raise the bar so to speak. During my three years as editor of Issues I believe we substantially elevated the status of the journal to the point that, without a doubt, it is considered the premier business education journal in the world. The observed reduction in acceptance rates and number of articles published per issue over the past five years correlates directly with an increase in quality. As one example of the increased expectation regarding the journal, consider instructional resources. During my term as editor we determined that in order to publish a case, the author(s) must do two things beyond case construction: (1) provide implementation guidance to users, based on actual classroom use of the case, and (2) provide evidence that the case was successful in terms of accomplishing a set of planned-for educational objectives. Our goal was to provide cases that were classroom-tested and that were educationally meaningful. These more stringent expectations certainly had an impact on the number of cases we received and the number of cases we published. You can't have it both ways: increased quality comes at the "cost" of publishing fewer articles. This was the trade-off I promised to the Publications Committee when I assumed the editorship of Issues.

It should be mentioned as well that when I constituted my editorial team I specifically invited individuals who had either published in accounting education or who had published in AAA section journals, if not TAR itself. (One associate editor on my team, for example, was the recipient of the AAA Competitive Manuscript Award.) The point here is that, by design, I wanted readers and authors to know that their papers were going to be judged by the same individuals who were publishing in the functional areas of accounting, including the section journals of the AAA. I believe this strategy was important to enhancing the quality reputation for the journal. In short, reviewers of papers submitted to Issues would be judged by the same standards and degree of rigor associated with other academic journals published by the AAA.

We teach in our courses the notion of the strategic importance of the "value proposition" for our targeted customer group. I would suspect that, along with Horizons, Issues is the most widely read of all AAA publications. It is indeed peculiar that in the current environment (budgetary concerns, etc.) the Executive Committee chooses an action that may alienate a substantial portion of the membership. How many of these individuals will no longer see "value" in being a AAA member? Is this even a concern of the Executive Committee?

Particularly offensive in the memo from the AAA president is the comment that polling the membership on this issue would not generate reliable data. (I am not sure whether this is a commentary on the aptitude of those who would conduct the survey or on the importance of such information from a decision-making standpoint.) Offensive as well was the comment regarding the inability to get good editors for Issues. Had the Executive Committee asked me, I could have provided them with many written comments regarding the service I (and members of my team) provided to authors during the term of my editorship. These letters speak to both the quantity and quality of feedback and support we gave to authors during the review process. These authors seemed genuinely appreciative of the "service" they received.

As to the issue of creating a new journal, combining practitioner-related and educational-related articles, there are some problems. One, what does this do for individuals (and there are many of us out there) who have publications in Issues and/or Horizons on our resumes? Two, I suspect that individuals would be dissuaded from submitting quality pieces to the new journal. One never knows, but it is entirely possible that the new journal would be viewed as of low quality. Three, the FMA experimented with a similar project. For several years the FMA published something called "Financial Practice and Education." This journal is defunct.

There are other aspects that readers of the president's memo, and the accompanying committee report, that can be challenged. I will these for others to address. However, from my reading of these materials, I can only conclude that the AAA made this decision on the basis of questionable information and unsubstantiated assertions. At a minimum it raises legitimate questions regarding the decision-making process of the organization. I am not sure what the appropriate course of action should be in response to this decision. I have always been a loyal supporter of the AAA. However, I fear that in response to the current decision a sizeable number of members will simply leave the organization. ------ 

David E. Stout 
Villanova University
Previous Editor of Issues in Accounting Education

I received Pete's notes on why the Executive Committee of AAA decided to drop two of the AAA journals--a surprise to me. I did not know that such a proposal was being considered or discussed. I could not get a good sense from the note about the Executive Committee's motivation to do this at this time.

I found the reasons given in the note unconvincing. I hope the Executive Committee will suspend the decision and solicit the membership feedback before moving further. Holding a town meeting at AAA meetings to present a fait accompli to the membership may only make things worse.

A. Quality: What prevents AAA from raising the "quality" of its existing journals? B. Cost: What prevents AAA from REPLACING its print journals by their electronic versions? The last time I looked at the AAA budget (13 years ago), a large part of it was spent on activities quite peripheral to the mission of an academic association. Publication of the journals is the most important of its activities. Everything else is dispensable--e.g., the cost of travel to the meetings of its Executive and other committees in any form other than conference calls. C. Proposal for a new Journal: I could not find anything substantive about specifications of this journal, except it would be of high quality (see A above). Is the AAA selling its members a pig-in-a-poke, to replace two known quantities. The members of AAA would need something more substantive than a wish for "higher quality" to be sold on the idea. Quality of our journals simply reflects what we, the members of AAA, are. No author, editor or referee of the two condemned journals aims for low quality; they do the best they can. Where do you propose to find the angels to do the "higher quality" work? Why could the Executive and the Publications Committee not find these angels in the past? D. An Alternative: If the Executive Committee knows how to create a better new journal, add it as an additional journal in electronic form for now and evaluate its success in five years. In 2008, the Association can decide if some of its four journals (three in print, one electronic) need to be dropped.

With best wishes,

Shyam Sunder
Yale University

I was present at the AAA Council Meeting at which the Exec Comm brought up this recommendation. As I recall, quite a number of folks voiced dissent in both their characterizations of these two journals and in their solution to the alleged problem. My conclusion at the end of the meeting was that this was not a "done deal." Of course, I could be naively mistaken.

My belief is that IF the AAA is trying to serve its members, THEN having LESS journals is not a move in the right direction in general.

The characterization of these two journals was that AH is "applied research" oriented (not sure I agree, but it certainly used to be) and that Issues is "curriculum development" oriented and those two things are so similar that they should be together. I completely disagree and apparently the AACSB does since those are separate categories for them as well.

The committee also reported that these journals are losing money and that was at least partial motivation if not the main motivation for the recommendation. While I have been for a long time and probably will remain a member of the AAA, I see a disconnect here. The AAA itself has been losing money and disbanding it has not and certainly shouldn't be a way to solve that problem, so perhaps it is also not a resaonable solution to the "losing money" problem that these journals have according to the report.

While AR clearly serves the association by bringing in $ through library subscriptions and AH and IAE apparently do not (at least not significantly) according to the Exec Comm, hardly is that a reason to discontinue AH and IAE. Does the AAA only exist to make money? Let's hope not... These journals (including AR) exist for other important reasons that are not directly tied to their bottom line $.

I don't recall being given stats on AH, but on Issues, I believe they told us that the acceptance rate was 10% and the journal was not getting enough quality submissions. If this is true, it would have been better to hear it from the editor. Unfortunately, neither of the editors seemed to be present at the meeting. Jim H's previous email reported that these may not be accurate numbers for IAE.

Personally, I object to the discontinuance of AH and IAE for quite a number of reasons, including,

- For those folks who have already published in the journals, their publications will automatically lose value if the journals cease to exist. Publishing in a dead journal doesn't count for much on some fronts.

- These journals serve very different and important purposes. A new journal this is more or less a merger of the two will not have a focus that can be used to build a solid reputation.

- The proposed new journal will take some time to build a reasonable reputation, which both of these journals already have.

- According to the AACSB, "basic research, applied research, and curriculum development" are three separately identifiable types of research/publication. AAA has three journals that each mainly focus on one of these areas. This is good. Changing it muddles the picture immensely.

- As academicians, we fill research, teaching and service roles. All three of the AAA main journals help (at least some of) us fulfill these roles.

- The proposal of the Exec Comm seems to reflect the opinions of a narrow group of people with mainly similar backgrounds. The AAA (hopefully still)has a very diverse membership and the decisions of the Exec Comm and the direction of the AAA re: journals should reflect that diversity.

- If the motivation for change is a money problem, then solving that money problem makes more sense than killing the journals. If money (income or whatever) is our motivation, then AAA would have ceased to exist already, given its recent financial picture. -For those of us who do research that never will, apparently, be of interest to the Accounting Review, the deletion of two quality potential publication outlets is very sad.

- Generally, solutions should directly address identified problems. I am still not clear on what the identified problems are and how thi solution will address them directly.

- For an association that is currently not financially strong, a move that will likely disenfranchise even more members is not a good one.

One alternative according to Paul Williams is that " we should go back to the old days and publish everything in The Accounting Review." While I think this would be fantastic, I think it is highly unlikely, unfortunately.

I do agree with Paul that rather than leaving the AAA, everyone should work for positive CHANGE, through the by-laws and whatever other means are possible. If folks with divergent views leave the AAA, then the AAA membership will become even more narrowly focused. To paraphrase a famous quote, "all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" --- ok so this isn't about evil, but the general point still applies.

Amelia Baldwin
University of Alabama

Dear Pete and AAA Executive Committee Members: 

I am writing this letter to express my dismay with the recent actions taken by the AAA Executive Committee regarding elimination of Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education and forming a new combined journal. The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues at the University of Oklahoma. 

I believe that both Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education are highly reputable journals with quite different target audiences. Accounting Horizons is a policy and “bridge to practice” journal that provides a vehicle to explore and debate issues of critical importance to the accounting profession in a way that is not possible in purely practitioner journals. It is useful for faculty to share with their peers and the profession accounting and disclosure issues that are not addressed in any other outlet. 

Given the enormity of the issues facing the accounting profession today Accounting Horizons is needed more than ever. There really is not another journal that focuses on bridging the gap between policy and practice in the way that Accounting Horizons does. I think that it is extremely important and is probably the most widely read of the AAA sponsored accounting journals. Furthermore, it supports basic research in accounting by highlighting important problems facing the profession. I have had numerous doctoral students refer to various papers in Accounting Horizons in helping to motivate research papers and dissertations. 

While I have used both Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education in classroom settings, they serve quite different functions. I see Accounting Horizons as more appropriate to advanced and graduate level classes (including Ph.D. classes) where the idea is to bring policy issues into the classroom. Issues in Accounting Education, on the other hand, addresses broader teaching related issues and provides cases useful for variety of levels and purposes. 

Another factor that did not appear to be given adequate consideration by the Executive Committee is the extent to which institutions would support and value publications in the new journal described. Asking deans and faculty evaluation committees (especially outside of accounting) to value any new journal highly is difficult at best. This problem would be compounded if the journal included both teaching and policy oriented papers. The Price College does not presently place high value on education related publications as creative activity and I think that combining education with the Accounting Horizons type papers could reduce the value placed on the policy oriented work. Consider what the response of your faculty would be to the news that the Academy of Management had begun a new journal called “Management Strategy and Education,” (hypothetical title) for example. My guess is that a journal related to strategy and education would be considered an education journal by most business college faculty members despite the efforts of management faculty to claim otherwise. Similarly, I don’t think that the American Accounting Association can simply start a journal and claim that it is top notch and have their non-accounting contemporaries and deans agree.

If Issues in Accounting Education has a problem attracting quality papers (and it appears from the correspondence sent by Jim Hasselback that it does), then perhaps the AAA should consider changing the focus or format of Issues in Accounting Education along the lines suggested for the new journal (combining on-line and hard copy format). Perhaps the number of volumes of Issues in Accounting Education published annually could be decreased if more of the content was on-line. 

I also think it is important to realize that while the University of Oklahoma does not rate an Issues in Accounting Education paper as highly as basic or policy oriented research, other institutions might do so. Institutions differ in their missions and the evaluation of research is generally tied to a schools mission. Personally, I have found many papers in Issues in Accounting Education to be very useful and informative. 

Finally even though many institutions require publications in "A" level basic journals for promotion and tenure and few would dispute that the Accounting Review is such a journal, accounting faculty continue to struggle with the issue of quantity of publication outlets relative to our colleagues in other areas of business and within the university. In fact, as the study by Zivney, Bertin and Gavin (Issues in Accounting Education Spring 1995, p. 6) reveals, only twenty-three percent of total accounting faculty publish in the top three accounting journals (The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting Research, and the Journal of Accounting and Economics). Of these twenty-three percent the average number of publications per faculty member is 2.7, which is less than required to attain tenure at most institutions. 

A common approach to evaluating faculty for tenure is to consider their publication portfolio. Many schools expect or require a certain amount of candidates’ work to fall in the category of basic research (and often some falling into one of the three aforementioned journals), but these schools also may consider additional high quality publications in more varied outlets. 

This is not to suggest that Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education can be justified only as a means to provide additional publication outlets. However most institutions would place some value on publications in both Issues in Accounting Education and Accounting Horizons. Reducing the number of potential outlets in which accounting faculty could publish makes it all the more difficult for accounting faculty to achieve promotion and tenure. Furthermore publications in Issues in Accounting Education often serve as a valuable part of a faculty member’s teaching portfolio.

It appears that some of the impetus behind the decision was the fact that teaching and practice sessions are held at mid-year section and region meetings. I do not think that it follows that what works at a meeting will necessarily work as a journal. I have been a regular attendee at the American Taxation Association (ATA) midyear meeting for many years and have attended research, practice and teaching sessions. It is true as Anne Christensen noted that these sessions attract a broad audience of teaching and research faculty from a wide variety of institutions. 

The practice and teaching sessions at the ATA mid year meeting are generally separate sections. The practice sessions often bring in current high level practitioners to comment on current topics. For example, the most recent ATA midyear meeting had a number of speakers talk about corporate tax shelters from the viewpoint of IRS compliance and from the perspective of those that market shelters. The talk was extremely well attended and informative. One advantage of having the speakers in is that they often interact with each other and engage in interesting debates in a way that would not likely occur in print. In fact, because the speakers often come from high level positions in business and government, they sometimes are willing to make “off the record” comments with an audience that almost certainly would never be translated into print. 

The teaching sessions tend to focus on either teaching tools (such as using the internet) or approaches to specific topics (for example international taxation). One area of great value in the teaching sessions is the opportunity to see master teachers display their craft. Faculty with both strong research and teaching foci tend to attend the sessions that relate to their teaching and research interests and to learn new material. For example, I have never taught international tax. However, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Ed Outslay go through the Quaker Oats/Snapple case and the intricate tax issues involved. I learned more about international tax and picked up teaching tips from an exceptional classroom instructor. 

Does the foregoing discussion mean that a journal should mirror what happens at the meetings as your discussion suggests? I don't think so. I am not convinced that many of the sessions at the ATA midyear meeting, no matter how well done, would convert readily into print form. Further even those sessions that appear suited to publication do not necessarily belong in a combined journal. If this is so, why doesn’t the AAA form one journal to emulate the varied activities that occur at the AAA national meeting? If in fact appealing to a broad audience is a concern with the AAA, one could argue that all areas of research should be published in The Accounting Review. 

Fundamentally I think that the reason that the ATA is so successful as a section is that is considers the broad needs of its membership and the membership is given the opportunity to be involved in all key decisions. For example, the decision to undertake a legal journal underwent lengthy debate and arose from a need that was expressed by a number of members in a survey conducted by an ATA strategic planning committee. The debate helped to sharpen the focus of the new journal and to assure that there was in fact sufficient interest to form the journal. However, despite interest in the new journal, there was little interest in merging it with The Journal of the American Taxation Association (JATA) precisely because of concerns regarding the difference in focus empirical and analytical basic tax research and legal research, the different audiences, and a feeling among the membership that combining the two would not enhance the perceived quality of either JATA or the ATA Journal of Legal Tax Research 

While I don't know what would arise if the AAA undertook a broad survey of its membership regarding the strategy and direction of the AAA, I would suspect that the journals supported by the AAA would be viewed as among its most value-added activities. For the AAA Executive Committee to vote to eliminate two of the three association-wide journals in such an abrupt fashion appears to be very short-sighted. I understand that financial concerns may have been a key factor. I would think that in making a determination of what areas to cut services to members a strategic look at what is valued by members would be taken into account. Furthermore, it may be necessary to increase dues for the AAA and or the journals. I sincerely hope that the decision will be reconsidered and that a more thorough process involving broad views of the AAA membership will be followed before any major changes in journals are implemented. Thank you for your consideration. 

Cordially, 
Frances L. Ayres
University of Oklahoma

April 1, 2003 message from Roger Collins [rcollins@CARIBOO.BC.CA] 

Warning - long; may contain rants... "The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

I've put Patricia's byline at the head of this note to remind me that there are things about these issues best left on one side. I'm not sure that I will keep to this sage piece of advice....

Having read - and having attempted to digest - all the e-mails on this topic - my 2 cents - for what it's worth ( I can't recall whether or not I paid my AAA sub this year) are as follows....

To begin...

On a different topic, John Rodi stated

I am aghast at the hubris of the leadership of the AICPA.

This sentiment seems to me to be an appropriate comment on the actions of the AAA in respect to the journal issue, particularly with regard to the way the decisions appear to have been made.(More on this issue later).

A number of commentators to this list have made some thoughtful comments with which I am in agreement - in particular, item B of the comments by Shyam Sunder, Amelia Baldwin's objections to the decision to discontinue AH and IAE and Bob's comment of March 30th worrying that the leadership of the AAA is getting more detached from educators.

I have an additional worry, as follows. Where are those academics who are pushing for "a return to scholarship and research" taking the rest of us? I'm well aware of the "Hardy" argument (A Mathematician's Apology - G. H. Hardy) that scholarship is a sufficient end in itself but in the case of much accounting research I have to confess that I find it obscure, esoteric, arid - and, to put it bluntly, irrelevant to the problems that are threatening to tear up the profession by its roots. I can see no justification whatsoever for any move that takes us further in that direction - frankly, if the issue is "tenure by ranked journal publications" it is time for a very hard look at the contents and editorial policy of those journals.At least Hardy could make the case that he was advancing knowledge in a some fundamental sense (tho' I doubt that he'd be amused to know that his research has been used to improve the carpet bombing effectiveness of B-52s ).

Some contributors to this list may recall some postings I made a few months (years?) ago concerning the PhD thesis of a legal academic ( Robert Chatov - "Corporate Financial Reporting - Public or Private Control?" ) in which he described the role of various parties in the formation of the SEC , together with the comment that the academic accountants had for all intents and purposes chickened out of the task of confronting the practitioners in matters of financial reporting issues.  For the benefit of those who missed it the first time...

"Another serious gap in accountant professionalism is the failure of academic accountants to gain sufficient operational influence within their field. For one thing, they have been too deferential.......The effects of accounting research as published in The Accounting Review had little effect on APB opinions.......The accounting scholar's higher authority exists mostly in the form of the administrative authority present within the SEC. But the commission lacks the independence of the courts because of its political vulnerability and the limitations inherent in combining the functions of accuser and judge.  Under the circumstances academic accountants, who for the most part are outside of the practitioner-client-SEC system, must play a less significant role, unless specifically assigned one legislatively.

The academics, however, have more or less acquiesced in this lesser role.....They have permitted themselves to be used by the accounting practitioners and by the financial community by holding secondary or token positions on the APB and the FASB, knowing that the real decisions would be dictated by either the AICPA or the FEI......to the extent that promotions are contingent on the publication of abstract, mathematically based papers, there will be less likelihood of academic participation in the public policy oriented issues concerned with the determination of corporate financial reporting standards"

There is a whole section in Chatov's text entitled "The Freezing Out of Academe".....

I recall also a lone voice (David Solomons) opining that the most important parts of FASB's Conceptual framework represented, in his words "a cop-out".

I see very little from what we accept as the top ranks of accounting scholarship in terms of a willingness to come to grips with these issues; it is little wonder that so few practitioners read AAA publications. For their part, many academics appear bent on a quest to produce a marvellous theoretical machine, partly by ratiocination and partly by simulation and experiment; in more than 25 years in academia I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of what the machine is supposed to do - assuming that it can ever be assembled.The quest for purity in scholarship is leading us in the direction of a situation

Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God." --John Collins Bossidy

- and of course the consequence is that the practitioners, having long ago won the battle for all the real power centres, continue on regardless, with only their own hubris to trip them up.

Having a long memory (not to mention advancing years) I recall the first issue of "Accounting Horizons". I found it to be an informative, readable journal that fulfilled the modest objective set for it - to be a link between accounting scholarship and practice. The articles were eminently down to earth, the issues current, and the journal as a whole was useable by graduate and undergraduate classes alike.It was also refreshing to read articles from practitioners, academics and other experts that did not have to conform to the editing requirements of "practitioner-oriented" periodicals or the rigidity of (some) "academic" journals.

At some point during Helen Gernon's editorship (I'm not seeking to add any moral dimension of "blame" for this, simply stating an impression) I sensed that the tenor of "Horizons" was moving away from a "practice" and towards an "academic" orientation. I have no hard evidence to back this up (a review of the comparative populations of "academic" and "practitioner" articles would be helpful at this point), and I may be mistaken; if I am not, I can only suggest that there are a number of reasons why this might have occured, including a lack of demonstrated interest in subscribing from practitioners and more interest on the part of academics than from practitioners in submitting articles.

We have now, apparently, reached the point where both "Horizons" and "IA" are seen appear to be "surplus to requirements". On reading President Wilson's (not Woodrow of The United States but Pete of the AAA) comments some choice comments of my own come to mind - but at this point I'm remembering Patricia's byline and trying to keep my temper, so I'll simply say that I agree wholeheartedly with the comments of Denny Beresford.

In closing - a couple of quotes:

1. "There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust"

- Demosthenes Philippic 2, section 24:(Generally known nowadays as "The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance")

2. "Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". House of Commons, 11 Nov. 1947 - Winston Spencer Churchill

In a world where we are acutely aware of the sacrifices being made in pursuit of democracy, the Executive of the AAA would be wise to keep these words in mind.

Roger

Roger Collins 
Associate Professor 
UCC School of Business

April 1, 2003 reply from Amy Dunbar [amy.dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

Roger,

Both you and Paul made me think about my assertion that TAR needs to stay "pure" for those who need publications in a top-tier journal. Whether or not that is a worthy goal, it is reality. I am talking from a very biased point of view: my husband, John Phillips, will go up for tenure in two years. Without publications in the "top three" journals, he will not get tenure, and we will have to leave a wonderful university. UConn gives me the freedom to pursue my love of technology, and I am happy here. No place is perfect, but UConn comes darn close. We do have faculty who are dealing with ethical issues research, despite running up against the "where is the rigor" argument.

I would be interested in knowing more about what kind of empirical research you do find worth pursuing. I can't imagine not doing some kind of research because it keeps my mind alive (how's that for a selfish reason). Given that we need a research design that attempts to control for competing hypotheses, we need to educate PhD students in various statistical procedures. Is there any published research that you find acceptable? We have an infant PhD program, and given that we want to place students, what research would you include in an accounting research seminar?

Thanks for taking the time to post. I always learn from posts like yours because they make me re-examine my basic premises.

Amy Dunbar

March 24, 2003

Dear Bill,

First, I hope that you are enjoying your duties as the AAA's President-Elect and looking forward to your forthcoming term as our President.  This letter responds to a note that I recently received, RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE ASSOCIATION-WIDE JOURNALS, in which the Publications Committee Task Force recommended that we cease publishing Issues in Accounting Education [IAE] and combine it with Accounting Horizons [AH], for the following reasons:

1. IAE and AH lack in submissions (compared, at least, to The Accounting Review [TAR]).

2. Abolishing IAE could save much of a $20,000 operating deficit of IAE.

3. The page counts in IAE have declined over the past few years.

4. IAE is the weakest of the AAA's major journals, making it attractive to few high quality Editor candidates and (recent) high quality journal submissions.

5. Many other educational journals exist in the marketplace to compete with IAE.

6. Most AAA members have strong interest in applied research and instructional development (which hardly seems as a valid reason to kill this publication).

This letter will show that ceasing publication of IAE would be counter-productive.  First, while the above Task Force contains many distinguished academic faculty members and leaders of our profession, few of them would be considered educational researchers or major contributors to IAE or other respected accounting education journals.  Surely, then, they are not the best judges of the future of IAE.  Furthermore, you may realize that since Dave Stout became IAE Editor five years ago, the rigor of the journal has increased substantially, which, of course, has led to fewer submissions and resultant publications. 

Now I wish to address each of the above six points:

1. IAE has indeed seen a large decline in recent submissions, as has AH and TAR.  Again, this represents a sign of its rigor as the world's premier educational journal in accounting.

2. While saving $20,000 may be important, not serving our current and forthcoming members is even more important.  For many years, the AAA has seen a large erosion of its membership--especially those teaching in non-doctoral programs who must often pay their own dues.  As a long-time member of the AAA's Membership and Community College Committees, I often hear one primary reason for this decline as the perception that the AAA is "an organization of major doctoral programs, for major doctoral programs and by major doctoral programs."  Killing IAE would reinforce this misconception and further alienate many current and potential members.

Next, many Educational cases appearing in IAE provide the solutions at the AAA's Web Site, which we use to help attract and retain members.  Given the approximate $100 marginal benefit of each AAA member, we need lose (or not attract) merely 200 members worldwide to make the killing of IAE counter-productive.  We could much more easily generate this $20,000 by simply increasing IAE's submission fees (which most schools will reimburse) or subscription fees.

I also understand that the AAA members select IAE over AH and TAR by wide margins, when choosing only one journal to receive as part of their membership, which reinforces the premium that our members place on this journal.

Moreover, I trust that the AAA will review carefully this reported $20,000 deficit, including why it declined from a prior year $40,000 deficit and the "true" marginal savings of killing IAE, especially if the reported deficits contained major non-marginal (fixed) cost allocations.

3. Again, IAE's page count has declined, similar to TAR and AH.  But in the 1950s, TAR published over 20 articles an issue.  Fifty years later, with many times the number of accounting faculty who could submit articles to TAR, it often published only five articles per issue.  But, just as the number of TAR articles per issue has grown a bit lately, so can the number of IAE ones.   Moreover, much of this decline in page count probably arises due to publishing Teaching Notes (which comprise many pages) on-line at the AAA's Website rather than in the Journal.

4. Yes, IAE is certainly weaker academically than TAR or AH, but it still is a highly respected journal.   For example, many studies (including one that Tom Calderon and I did of all of the nation's accounting programs) rank it overall as an "A" journal.  While some major accounting doctoral programs would give little credit to their faculty members publishing there, the vast majority of the country's programs would give it much credit.  Again, removing a potential source of a major publication for most AAA members seems highly counter-productive.

 

5. Yes, many other fine educational journals compete with IAE in the accounting marketplace (e.g., Journal of Accounting Education and Advances in Accounting Education).  However, every research study on journal quality places IAE as the best of this genre.  Should not the AAA maintain and support this hard-won and well-deserved level of excellence?

6. Agreeing strongly with the Committee's statement that AAA members have strong interest in applied research and instructional development makes killing IAE most counter-intuitive.  This is actually an argument for maintaining the journal.

Moreover, the Task Force's suggestion that a new AAA journal (combing IAE with AH) should contain book reviews now appearing in TAR fails to recognize that IAE has published the vast majority of such book reviews for several decades.  We also will find erosion in AAA membership and library subscription revenues in this merger of both journals.

Please consider one more point regarding the issue of possibly killing IAE.  We have seen large, recent declines in attendance and paper submissions at Regional AAA Meetings.  Having the AAA kill IAE will send a strong signal to those attending such Regional Meetings that the AAA Leadership cares little about this type of research, which will undoubtedly reduce the number of submissions and reimbursements for such meetings.  Department Chairs and Deans could then claim that if the AAA itself does not care about Educational Research, why should we pay for it?  Declining attendance at Regional AAA Meetings will further damage the AAA's financial health.

Bill, I appreciate greatly your time and consideration of this important matter

Please contact me if you wish to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely,

Alan Reinstein
George R. Husband Professor of Accounting
Wayne State University
(248) 357-2400 

1. The accounting review should be a monthly publication, should be expanded to twice it's current size, and should include associate editors who are appointed by each of the sections of the AAA. The editor's position should be elected by a vote of the AAA membership. The purpose of this proposal is to reflect the diversity and excellence of the ENTIRE AAA membership.

2. Nominations for AAA leadership should come exclusively from member nominations. All those nominated for positions should be voted on by the membership. (Note that this approach includes the current method of insider only nominations).

Now..... who is with me? How can we make these proposals happen?

Dan Stone
University of Kentucky
Email address:  Dan Stone [dstone@UKY.EDU] 

April 16, 2003 reply from Paul Williams  [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU] 

Dan, et al, 

To return to Dan's modest proposals: In the Fall of 1995 a group of us proposed some changes to the AAA bylaws. Those proposed changes were printed in the November 1995 Accounting Education News. The third proposed change is probably the most relevant to this discussion. In brief, it called for the elimination of the Committee on Nominations to be replaced by a Committee on Elections. Rather than nominate AAA officers, the Committee on Elections had the charge of administering the election of AAA officers from slates nominated by the members. The essence of the change would be to have competitive elections for AAA offices among candidates nominated by the members. 

The advantage of competitive elections is that candidates would present members with explicit "platforms" so that the organization would be responsive to its members. The journals issue is merely a symptom of a much more fundamental problem of how decisions are made in the AAA and the values that lie behind that process. Had we had a more open process in the past, this Issues/Horizon problem wouldn't have happened because there is a high likelihood they wouldn't have been created in the first place. 

We would still have one "flagship" journal, The Accounting Review, that published articles of interest to all members. That journal used to have an Education section, it used to publish "normative" pieces (until that became a dirty word and we replaced it with the dogmatic normativity of positive economic science), etc. Publishing capabilities are such today that there literally is no limit on how many articles could be published in TAR in any period of time. It is a mistake to believe that such a move would jeopardize TAR's status as a premier journal. 

What is now regarded as rigorous research in accounting was not dictated by nature; it was imposed via the colonization of accounting by people who figured out they could make more money selling themselves as accountants than as financial economists. To quote Anthony Hopwood, "Accounting is a practice; you can talk about it any way you want." That's what TAR should permit. Perhaps, just perhaps, the work published in JAR and JAE isn't really as good as we are incessantly told that it is. 

This listserv has demonstrated the power that the internet was advertised to have. It has forced the AAA Executive Committee to back pedal. It has even more power than that; it has the power to determine who that Executive Committee is. Everyone of you probably has a person in mind who would be an excellent president of the AAA, or editor of TAR, or director of education, or .... If you compared your respective choices, you might find that there was notable commonality. Hey, we have identified some people that we think could run this organization well. 

Currently the chances that those people will actually be selected to do that job are slim to none. 

You can change that; I encourage you to do it. 

Paul Williams
NorthCarolina State University

The problem is that the message below from President Wilson really does not supply any hard data upon which the membership can realistically debate this proposal by President Wilson and the current Executive Committee. Hopefully he or President-Elect Bill Felix will confirm or deny my cost and revenue analysis given at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm#Jensen 

President Wilson's message below seems to duck the issue of costs and provides a really convoluted argument that the two journals are not serving the AAA membership.

The two main reasons that President Wilson is advocating dropping Issues in Accounting Education and Accounting Horizons really aren't backed up with hard data:

The first reason is the claim by President Wilson that library revenue is low from these two journals. This was true from 1983 and 1987 beginnings of each journal and has very little to do with quality.

The Journal of Accounting and Economics is supposedly the premiere research journal that competes more directly with The Accounting Review. The fact that the number of library subscriptions to JAE) is relatively low relative to all three AAA journals does not make JAE lower in quality. The number of library subscriptions is due more to price and date at which the journals commenced. The Accounting Review is relatively cheap and commenced publication in 1926 (I think). Issues in Accounting Education commenced in 1983 and Accounting Horizons Commenced in 1987. Since it is much harder to convince libraries to add subscriptions than to remove subscriptions, the predominance of older journals in libraries comes as no surprise.

President Wilson's analysis of this issue of library versus membership subscriptions starts out great in his April 11 message, but then he makes a very convoluted conclusion quoted below:

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We would expect that if Horizons and Issues were meeting these needs adequately for a significant portion of the membership, their library subscription revenues would exceed those of the Review -- students and faculty would pressure librarians to subscribe. 
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I find this to be an absurd and convoluted conclusion, because by the same token, AAA members would pressure libraries to subscribe to other allegedly higher quality accounting research journals such as JAE, Journal of Accounting Research, Contemporary Issues in Accounting, The European Accounting Review, Abacus, etc.  Show me the data that library subscriptions to Issues in Accounting Education and Accounting Horizons are way below any one of the leading top accounting research journals other than The Accounting Review that has been in college libraries since 1926.

I also find the above quotation also absurd given the wonderful decision of the AAA to allow instructors to freely distribute articles in all AAA journals to any student enrolled in an accounting course.  If, as President Wilson even suggests, accounting instructors are getting more use out of Issues of Accounting Education and Accounting Horizons in teaching materials, then it is not necessary for the campus library to subscribe to those journals for the benefit of students.  Professors can place photocopies of any article on reserve and/or distribute as many articles as desired to students via email (after downloading one electronic version of each article). The need for library subscriptions is, thereby, greatly reduced.

In reality, the revenue issue should hinge more upon subscription choices of members than their campus libraries. Those subscription differences in particular do not support the case that The Accounting Review is doing any better than Issues in Accounting Education. All of the journals are profitable. Anne Christensen wrote the following at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm#Christensen 

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According to a report by Tracey Sutherland, 4,167 or 54.8% of AAA members subscribe to all three journals, 947 to The Accounting Review only, 348 to Accounting Horizons only, and 943 to Issues in Accounting Education only. These figures indicate that a large portion of AAA members value all three journals. Of those individuals who choose to subscribe to only one journal, there is not a meaningful difference in the number choosing The Review and the number choosing Issues. With a 10 to 17 percent manuscript acceptance rate at Issues, a steady supply of submissions, and an extensive subscriber list, Issues appears to be well supported. 
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The above hard data certainly run counter to the conclusion of President Wilson provides in the message below:

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Our conclusion from this argument and from having read Horizons and Issues is that these journals do an excellent job of meeting the "practice and teaching" needs of many members but that they likely do not meet these needs for a significant portion of the membership.
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The second reason is President Wilson wants to drop both Issues and Horizons is the quality of refereeing, editing, and published content is low for the two targeted AAA journals relative to The Accounting Review. See his statements with respect to low quality at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm#Wilson 

The current editors (Tom Howard and Jim Largay) and former editors (Wanda Wallace and David Stout) vehemently disagree, some taking personal offense. See their strong messages to President Wilson at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm 

My position is that the importance of the research in all AAA journals, including The Accounting Review, cannot be all that important to leaders of the AAA since the current and former AAA Executive Committees have all discouraged replications of published research by not allowing AAA publication of replications. Faculty are, thereby, discouraged from conducting replication research that cannot be published. See "Are accounting researchers really seeking truth?" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book02q4.htm#Replication 

The bottom line is that I am pleased that the decision is not a done deal and the membership still has some opportunity for input. I was initially disappointed that there will not be any survey, even a random sample survey, to indicate how the members really feel about this issue. Voluntary input is really haphazard and easily skewed by the survey questionnaire itself.  In retrospect, if the survey questionnaire does not have hard data and balanced arguments on both sides of the issue, I guess I am really glad that the Executive Committee is not surveying the membership.

The real issue is whether the open debates on this issue serve as an opportunity for injecting more democracy into AAA governance. The power of three past presidents in the nominations process of a single slate of candidates every year creates too much opportunity for decades of a dynasty of one research philosophy.  See "Several Messages from Paul William followed by replies from Jagdish Gangolly and Dan Stone" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm#Williams 

President Wilson makes some other arguments in favor of dropping the two journals. I hope you will read those arguments carefully and then compare them with many other sides presented at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AAAjournals.htm 

I really do like academic debates in which all sides receive full and fair disclosure of opinions and facts.  This debate does not go on record as having the Executive Committee's full and fair disclosure.

Thanks,

Robert (Bob) Jensen 
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business 
Trinity University San Antonio, TX 78212-7200 
Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  
Homepage: http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

Reply from Jason Xiao

Dear All, Relating to the AAA executive committee's decision to terminate Accounting Horizons, I would like to draw your attention to an academic study of global academics' perceptions on the quality of accounting journals by Professors Apostolas Ballas and Vasilis Theoharakis at the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration (ALBA). Drawing on the views from a sample of 1231 academics worldwide, the paper finds that "Impressively, Accounting Horizons (AHO) is the 4th most popular and the 2nd most frequently read journal worldwide" (p.9). The study also places Accounting Horizons at about 10th among all journals in terms of average rank position. For further information, please read the full paper by following this link to SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=319226 

Jason Xiao 
Cardiff Business School 
Cardiff University Cardiff UK