ACCOUNTING PROGRAM RESEARCH RANKINGS BY TOPICAL AREA AND

METHODOLOGY

Joshua G. Coyne
Brigham Young University

Scott L. Summers
Brigham Young University

Brady Williams
Brigham Young University

David A. Wood
Brigham Young University
515 TNRB
Provo, UT 84602
Telephone: (801) 422-8642
Fax: (801) 422-0621
davidwood@byu.edu

May 2010

We express our thanks to Derek Oler, Mitch Oler, and Chris Skousen for sharing data with us. We
thank George Foster, Jeff Hoopes, Robert Jensen, Steve Kachelmeier, Jagan Krishnan, Jeff
McMullin, Eric Press, Kari Olsen, Chad Simon, Jason Smith, Nate Stephens, Stanley Veliotis,
and participants at the 2008 BYU Accounting Research Symposium for helpful comments and
suggestions.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337755

 ACCOUNTING PROGRAM RESEARCH RANKINGS BY TOPICAL AREA AND
METHODOLOGY

ABSTRACT:
This paper makes two novel contributions to ranking accounting research programs constructed
from publication counts in top journals (AOS, Auditing, BRIA, CAR, JAE, JAR, JATA, JIS,
JMAR, RAST, and TAR). In contrast to previous studies, we recognize the mobility of
intellectual assets tied to the human capital of accounting researchers and therefore base our
rankings on the researchers' current affiliations, rather than their affiliations at the time of
publication. Also, we categorize each article written by topical area (auditing, financial,
managerial, accounting information systems, tax, and other) and by methodology (analytical,
archival, experimental, and other) and provide separate accounting program rankings by topical
area and by methodology. These two innovations provide a rich, centralized information resource
for decision-makers—both institutional and individual—in choosing how to allocate time,
resources, and expertise.

Key Words: Accounting Research Rankings, Accounting Research Methodology, Accounting

Research Topical Areas

JEL Descriptors: M4, M40, M41, M42, M49

Data Availability: Requests for data may be made to the authors.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337755

 INTRODUCTION

Some of the most important career decisions made by academic accountants are made in

an environment that is distinctly lacking in transparent, reliable, and relevant information. Those

deciding where to pursue a Ph.D. or seek employment in accounting academia have traditionally

relied on informal inquiries about the reputations of institutions and their faculties, or other

measures of quality such as surveys of perceptions and accounting rankings that reduce all

accounting topical and methodological research production into a single ranking number. Given

that most academic accountants specialize in a particular sub-discipline of accounting, decisions

based on overarching reputations, broad surveys, and singular rankings suffer from a lack of

specialized, granular information that could better inform decision-makers. We contribute to

knowledge in the field of accounting academics by providing granular, quantitative information

to these decision-makers.

We propose a unique design for measuring the intellectual assets held by accounting

research programs that will enhance the current body of ranking literature in two ways. First, we

assume that the intellectual assets of a researcher stay with that researcher when moving from

institution to institution1. Second, recognizing specialty areas (both topical and methodological)

within the accounting discipline—a similar concept currently exists in other business school

disciplines (e.g. management)—we report rankings by methodology and topical area that allow

institutions to be recognized for their expertise in specialty areas. 2

1
Crediting a publication to the author's current institution allows a university’s research ranking to change based on
the addition or loss of a distinguished researcher. Creating rankings in this way measures the impact of the
intellectual assets (contributions) of the individual researcher by tying those assets to the present institution rather
than ascribing intellectual assets to an entity incapable of reasoning—a university.
2
Previous research (cf. Bazley et al. 1975; Andrews and McKenzie 1978; Windall 1981; Zivney and Thomas 1985;
Hasselback and Reinstein 1995; Fogarty 1995; Trieschmann et al. 2000; Brown 2003; Chan et al. 2007) has ranked
research programs, but not by topic—accounting information systems (AIS)/auditing/financial/managerial/tax—or
methodology— archival/analytical/experimental; We note that Brown and Laksmana (2004) break rankings of Ph.D.
programs into two categories, financial and non-financial.

1
 In regards to the second contribution, since the most influential accounting journals

publish a disproportionately high number of articles in the financial specialty area (Bonner et al.

2006), parties interested in expertise in other specialty areas may make sub-optimal decisions by

relying on ratings heavily influenced by the financial accounting specialty. The creation of

accounting research program rankings by specialty area allows universities to compare and

contrast their programs with programs that are focusing on the same specialties. It also allows

individual academics to recognize pockets of specialty where they might choose to network and

it allows future academics to evaluate the depth and breadth of research coming from universities

where they might pursue their terminal degree.

These rankings significantly increase the amount of available information that could be

used by multiple decision-makers, including:

Prospective Ph.D. students. Each student or accounting professional that decides to

pursue a Ph.D. in accounting is immediately faced with the challenge of finding a university with

programs, faculty, and expectations that match the applicant’s needs, wants, and career goals.

This decision is often multifaceted and complex. Providing rankings by topical area and

methodology will allow prospective Ph.D. students to better target programs which are best able

to support their research interests.3

Ph.D. graduates. Rankings decomposed by discipline and based on current location of

human capital will also benefit Ph.D. candidates as they graduate and enter the job market. They

will be able to use these rankings to target positions at universities that fit their career goals. This

3
We note from a survey we conducted of 15 (11 respondents) pre-doctoral students invited to an informational
doctoral program meeting by the IS section of the AAA, all potential doctoral students indicated they would consult
topical and methodological ranking results, if available, when making their decision about which programs to apply
to and to attend. Furthermore, they ranked topical and methodological expertise as the most important criteria of
factors in deciding which programs they would apply to and attend (other factors ranked were financial aid,
graduation rates, time to graduate, placement, physical location, and overall rankings).

2
study identifies top programs in each specialty area, which is especially valuable if these

programs do not register highly in general ranking studies.

Research institutions. Accounting department heads, business school administrators,

and university leadership may find these results useful in establishing legitimacy—both internal

and external. This study recognizes those schools that have been and are making a concerted

effort to specialize and improve their research reputation. A school that has never placed highly

in general rankings may be able to use these rankings to demonstrate credibility in certain

specialty areas or methodologies. This credibility can help justify internal funding for materials,

technology, or additional research and help attract external funding. Also, these rankings could

be used as evidence for accreditation purposes of the research production of an institution’s

faculty.

Professional organizations. In July 2008, the AICPA announced the introduction of a

$15 million fund designed to send experienced practitioners back to school to get Ph.D.s to help

fill the shortage of audit and tax faculty (AICPA 2008). This fund, which is made up of donations

from many of the largest accounting firms and many state accounting associations, is designed to

send professionals back for audit and tax training in Ph.D. programs. The rankings provided in

this paper will highlight programs that specialize in research related to audit and tax. In this way,

the effectiveness of the fund could be enhanced by allowing these individuals to target programs

where they will get the best audit- and tax-specific training and by helping fund administrators to

know where to direct additional funds.

This paper proceeds as follows. First, we discuss our sample and then methodology.

Next, we present the ranking results with some commentary on how these ranking may be used.

Finally, we conclude by discussing the implications of our research and the consequences of

3
design choices we made in our study. We note that we include an Appendix discussing a

companion website that provides additional information that could not be included in the article

because of space constraints.

SAMPLE DESCRIPTION

To create our rankings, we index all peer-reviewed articles in Accounting, Organizations,

and Society (AOS); Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory (Auditing); Behavioral Research

in Accounting (BRIA); Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR); Journal of Accounting &

Economics (JAE); Journal of Information Systems (JIS); Journal of Accounting Research (JAR);

Journal of Management Accounting Research (JMAR); Journal of the American Taxation

Association (JATA); Review of Accounting Studies (RAST); and The Accounting Review (TAR).4

We chose these journals because previous research has shown that six of these journals (AOS,

CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) are considered the highest rated accounting journals (cf.

Glover et al. 2006; Bonner et al. 2006; Lowensohn and Samelson 2006).

Studies have also provided evidence that these journals may not provide representative

coverage of accounting methodologies and topical areas (Bonner et al. 2006). Using the results

of a survey of 517 academics from various American Accounting Association (AAA) sections

(Lowensohn and Samelson 2006), we selected the journals perceived to be the best by

methodology (behavioral) and topical area (tax, managerial, and AIS). 5 By this process we add

BRIA, JATA, JMAR, and JIS. We add Auditing to this list as it is regularly considered to be the

top journal for publishing audit research aside from those already mentioned. Including these

4
We do not include articles that were invited by the editor or conference discussant papers (such as JAR or CAR
conference discussion papers) since these articles are not required to go through the peer-review process. Also, we
exclude articles written directly to a professional audience and educational cases.
5
Although the survey included the topical areas of government and non-profit, we do not employ these topics in our
rankings, so we did not include them in the journal selection process.

4
additional journals should provide greater coverage of topical areas and methodologies that are

not adequately represented in the traditional top six journals.

Our rankings do not explicitly recognize “top-tier” contributions of researchers in

supporting disciplines (e.g., finance, economics, psychology, etc). We made this choice because

of our interest in identifying top accounting research programs and because of the time intensive

nature of creating these rankings. While contributions in the “top-tier” of supporting journals are

important and contribute to the academic prestige of the researcher, we believe they are less

relevant to identifying accounting expertise than an evaluation of research published in

accounting journals.6

METHODOLOGY

To create our rankings, we index all articles published in the aforementioned journals

between 1990 and 2009 and categorize them based on topic and methodology. Because of the

time-intensive nature involved in creating these rankings, we limit our analysis to a 20-year

window, which effectively covers three tenure cycles. We note that authors who were prolific

researchers before 1990 but have not continued to actively research since 1990 likely have fewer

current intellectual research assets to share with colleagues.7

We categorize each article by methodological category: analytical, archival,

experimental, or other; however, our methodological categories are not mutually exclusive. 8 For

example, Hodder et al. (2008) employ an experiment as well as archival tests in their paper. We

6
Glover et al. (2006) examine the publication records of faculty promoted at the top 75 research schools. In
unreported analyses, the correlation between publishing in the top 3 accounting journals (TAR, JAR, and JAE) and
publishing in other top business journals is 0.86 when considered at the school portfolio level. This suggests that
while our results will not provide a complete picture of the articles published by accounting scholars, they are
unlikely to be biased by excluding articles published in other top business journals.
7
We explore the importance of currency in more depth later in the paper.
8
Although the decision to allow for multiple methodological and/or topical categorizations per article causes some
articles to be counted in multiple rankings, we argue that this more accurately captures the authors' potential to
contribute in multiple areas.

5
categorize this article as both archival and experimental for purposes of our rankings. We define

our methodological classifications as follows:

Analytical: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on the act of formally

modeling theories or substantiating ideas in mathematical terms. These studies use analytic

devices to predict, explain, or give substance to theory.

Archival: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on objective data collected

from repositories. Also included are studies in which the researchers, or another third party,

collected the research data and in which the data has objective amounts such as net income,

sales, fees, etc. (i.e., the researcher creates an objective repository of data).

Experimental: studies whose analyses and conclusions are based on data the researcher

gathered by administering treatments to subjects. Usually these studies employ random

assignment; however, if the researcher selected different populations in an attempt to

“manipulate” a variable (e.g., participants of different experience levels were selected for

participation), we also consider these experimental in nature.

Other: studies that did not fit into one of the other methodological categories. The

methodologies in these studies vary significantly and include such things as surveys, case

studies, field studies, simulations, persuasive arguments, etc.

Similar to our categorization by methodology, our categorization by topical area allows

for multiple categories per article. If an article sheds light on multiple topical areas, it is

categorized as providing a contribution to each area (e.g., Prawitt, et al. [2009] examine how

internal audit quality [audit] impacts earnings management [financial]). In categorizing articles

by topical area, we employ the following definitions:

6
 AIS: studies which address issues related to the systems and the users of systems that

collect, store, and generate accounting information. Users are defined broadly to include those

involved in collection, storage, or use of accounting information or even the implementation of

the system. These systems may be electronic or not. Research streams include, but are not

limited to design science, ontological investigations, expert systems, decision aides, support

systems, processing assurance, security, controls, system usability, and system performance.

Auditing: studies in which the topical content involves an audit topic. These studies vary

widely and include, but are not limited to, the study of the audit environment—external and

internal, auditor decision making, auditor independence, the effects of auditing on the financial

reporting process, and auditor fees.

Financial: studies that address the topical content of financial accounting, financial

markets, and decision making based on financial accounting information.

Managerial: studies that examine issues regarding budgeting, compensation, decision-

making within an enterprise, incentives, and the allocation of resources within an enterprise.

Tax: studies that examine issues related to taxpayer decision-making, tax allocations, tax

computations, structuring of accounting transactions to meet tax goals, tax incentives, or market

reactions to tax disclosures.

Other: studies that do not fit into one of the other topical areas. The topical areas in these

studies vary significantly and include such things as education, methodologies, law, psychology,

history, the accounting profession, work environment, etc.

We use data previously categorized by Oler et al. (2009) as a starting point for

categorizing articles appearing in AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST and TAR journals. For this data,

one of the authors on this project reviewed each article categorization made by the Oler et al.

7
(2009) team and made changes as deemed appropriate to fit our categorization scheme. For the

other journals, two of the authors on this project categorized each article. All discrepancies in

ratings were resolved through discussion.

After categorizing each article, we identified the author’s current school affiliation by

first searching in the 2008 Hasselback directory (Hasselback 2008). We then visited the website

of the university listed in the Hasselback directory and verified that the professor was listed as

being employed at the institution (this, and the article listings, were last updated in December

2009). If the author was not listed in the Hasselback directory, or if we could not find them on

the website of the institution listed by the Hasselback directory, we searched the internet for the

author and recorded the author’s current university affiliation.9 If professors were listed as

holding joint appointments or were listed as visiting scholars, we credited the “home” school for

those publications. We created initial rankings after performing this step; subsequently, for all

schools that were listed in the top 50 of any of these initial rankings, we revisited the school's

faculty website, verified that the authors listed belong to that school, and searched for any

professors listed on the school website that had not been categorized in our database. If we could

not find a professor’s affiliation after performing all these steps, we considered that professor to

be no longer employed in academia and, therefore, we gave no credit to any institution for that

individual's research. 10

To create our rankings, we gave each author full credit for each article published in these

journals (i.e., for coauthored papers, all institutions of the authors received credit for the

9
To conduct our internet search, we searched for the researcher’s name or their name and special key words (e.g.,
accounting, university, etc.). If we found initial evidence of a professor at a university (e.g., a paper listed on SSRN),
we then visited that university website to verify the faculty member was employed at the school. If we could not
locate a professor on a university’s directory, they were not included in this study.
10
We gave credit to a school for authors outside of accounting departments yet who publish in accounting journals if
we could locate them in their current school affiliation web directory as described in the text.

8
publication and if multiple authors were from the same institution, the institution received credit

for each author).11 We then summed the number of total publications for each school by

methodology and by topical area. Finally, we ranked schools by the total productivity of the

faculty currently at that school.12

We take four additional steps to maximize the usefulness of this data. First, for all

rankings we provide the number of distinct professors that contribute to each ranking. Given our

methodology, schools that have larger faculties are more likely to be ranked higher because they

employ more individuals who have the possibility of publishing articles. However, we do not

scale our rankings by faculty size four several reasons.

First, our objective is ranking the intellectual assets available at institutions rather than

ranking the average productivity of faculty. Further, choosing to scale by faculty size is

problematic due to the difficult nature of determining faculty size, especially in specialty areas.

Several possible ways to scale the data by size include scaling by the size of the department,

number of authors who published the articles, or the number of professors who research in an

area (or use that methodology). We noticed as we categorized articles that many schools do not

have a separate accounting department or combine the accounting department with finance,

information systems, or the entire business school. In addition, many accounting academics work

in administrative positions making it difficult to choose whether to include them “in” the

department. These problems make scaling by the count of faculty in the department problematic

and subjective. Scaling by the number of authors who published articles in this index is

11
We chose to give each author full credit because we view each author as likely to have increased their intellectual
assets by working on the project. We also did not want to introduce noise or bias by attempting to create a subjective
weighting scheme of the value of different journal articles. If high quality outcome data becomes available in the
future for which reliable and theoretically justified weightings could be created, then future researchers should
reexamine these rankings using those weights. However, to our knowledge, we are unaware of a high quality
weighting based on empirical data.
12
If we discovered that a professor had retired, was emeritus, or had died we did not include them in the rankings.

9
problematic in that one person could publish a high number of articles and therefore cause that

school to score very highly despite being the only active researcher at the institution. We do not

believe this type of ranking would be of greatest usefulness to the accounting academy. Finally,

scaling by the number of professors who research in an area is problematic because many

researchers research in multiple methodologies and there is no clear way to count the number of

professors working in a particular area.

The second step we take to make the data useful is to provide three types of consolidated

rankings: by topical area, by methodology, and by both topical area and methodology. This

consolidation allows for a discussion of which institutions are well-versed or well-rounded in all

specialty areas. The consolidated rankings are created by averaging the topical area rankings, the

methodology rankings, or both. This is in contrast to consolidated rankings based on total

publication counts. Rankings based on total publications introduce weighting problems as some

areas are disproportionately represented in journals (Bonner et al. 2006). These rankings

recognize schools that are able to do well in all or virtually all methodological and topical areas

and are likely of special interest to prospective Ph.D. students who may not know exactly what

they will want to research and would like to go to a school that supports broad topical areas

and/or broad methodologies.

The third step we take is to report rankings based on three different time windows—the

full time window (20 years), the previous 12 years, and the previous 6 years. Providing rankings

of shorter windows allows users to infer various trends. For example, if a school is very highly

ranked in the full time window but not in the previous 6 year window, it may suggest that the

school employs an aging faculty who are winding down their research careers. Conversely, a

school that is ranked very highly in the 6 year window but not in the full window may have

10
promising young scholars who are highly productive but have not been employed a sufficient

length of time to produce a tremendous quantity of research.

Finally, we create a website with additional functionality to increase the usefulness of the

rankings (see the Appendix for additional discussion of the website).

RESULTS

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the sample. Panel A shows the percentage of

articles by topical area for each different journal. It is apparent that journals have very different

tastes in terms of topics of articles published. Of the traditional big 3 accounting journals (TAR,

JAR, and JAE), TAR publishes the broadest topical scope of articles. AOS and BRIA are the only

non-specialty-topic journals that publish a higher percentage of articles in an area other than

financial (AOS publishes more managerial than any other topical area and BRIA publishes more

“other” research and auditing than any other topical area). Also of note is the almost complete

lack of publication of AIS research in any journal other than JIS. We note that Table 1 does not

consider the quantity of different types of articles submitted to the journals; therefore, we cannot

conclude from this table that there is an editorial or reviewer bias against certain topical areas or

methodologies. 13

Panel B shows the percentage of articles by methodology for each different journal. With

the exception of AOS, BRIA, JIS, and JMAR, archival research is the dominant methodology

published. BRIA publishes a higher percentage of experimental research than other

methodologies, and JIS, JMAR, and AOS publish a higher percentage of “other” methodologies

than analytical, archival, or experimental. Although these descriptive statistics provide evidence

13
As an example of the importance of considering the rate of submission before determining bias, the 2007
Contemporary Accounting Research Editor’s Report reveals that only 5 of 258 submissions to the journal were in
the area of tax. Thus, even if CAR published all of these articles, it would still show a low percentage of published
tax studies in a presentation similar to Table 1. Thus, the results in Table 1 do not necessarily suggest editor/reviewer
bias but may be explained by unknown submission rates to the journals.

11
that all research methodologies can be published somewhere, it also shows that specific journals

may have defined methodological and/or topical area tastes in terms of research they have

published in the past.

Panel C of Table 1 shows the percentage of articles by methodology for each topical area.

Managerial research has the greatest distribution of methodologies as each methodology is used

at least 16 percent of the time in managerial publications. Financial has the least distribution of

methodologies as archival is used 76 percent of the time and the next highest used methodology

is analytical, used 12 percent of the time. Audit research uses a relatively equal blend of archival,

experimental, and other methodologies but lags behind in employing the analytical methodology.

Tax is reasonably diverse in terms of methodology as the lowest methodology, “other”, is used in

10 percent of publications. Finally, AIS uses primarily experimental and “other” methodologies

to address research questions.

(Insert Table 1 about here)

Table 2 presents rankings based on raw total counts of total articles published. This

ranking is comparable to most previous accounting program rankings. The particular institutions

that rank highly in this ranking are similar to past studies—which provides some face validity to

the methodology we employ as the results are consistent with past studies. However, one can see

how our decision to only credit an institution for faculty currently at the institution influences

rankings. For example, the University of Michigan has traditionally been one of the top

producers of accounting research; however, in our rankings they appear as only the 18th ranked

school in the last 6 years. This is largely due to the loss of key researchers in recent years.

Although giving credit to an institution for faculty currently at the institution produces some

changes in rankings, the main contribution of this paper is to provide evidence of expertise in

12
particular accounting research topical areas and methodologies, which we do in subsequent

tables. By including the total rankings in Table 2, one can compare topical and methodological

rankings to this table to get some idea of how well the overall rankings represent each individual

topical and methodological area ranking.

(Insert Table 2 about here)

Table 3 presents the rankings of universities broken down by topical area. We list the top

40 schools for each topical area and present three rankings: rankings over the previous 6, 12, or

full year range (rankings are sorted by the 6 year column). We list each topical area

alphabetically.

There are several interesting things to note from the rankings other than just the rank

ordering of the universities. The trend of universities rankings from 6 years to 20 years is

valuable information. For example, a school like Florida International in the audit rankings is

ranked first over the 6 year window but eighth over the 20-year window. This suggests that

Florida International has been very active in the recent past and is the top producer of audit

research in the last 6 years.

Analyzing the trends of publications also reveals interesting findings when looking at an

entire topical area’s rankings. For example, the top 10 schools in financial over the 6 year

window were all in the top 25 over the full year window. In Managerial and Auditing, four and

three schools in the top 10 during the 6 year window were not in the top 25 schools over the full

year window. This suggests that there is significant change in rankings for some topical areas

relative to the other topical areas.

These rankings are also useful to non-US schools. Note in the managerial rankings that

10 of the top 40 schools in the 6 year window are international schools. In the audit rankings, 11

13
of the top 40 schools are international schools. These rankings help to give credibility to these

institutions in terms of their ability to produce top quality research in given topical areas. Also of

interest in these rankings is the number of faculty whose published articles have contributed to a

given ranking. For example, in the managerial rankings, Stanford is rated first over the full year

range even though only 5 different authors published managerial articles. The second ranked

university, Michigan State, has twice as many authors. This information could be used by

potential Ph.D. students (current doctoral students) in targeting which school to attend (work

for). Whereas Stanford appears to have fewer researchers publishing managerial research, these

researchers are publishing a very high volume of articles. Michigan State, the second ranked

school, has more researchers, but they do not appear to be producing at a rate as fast as Stanford.

(Insert Table 3 about here)

Table 4 is very similar to Table 3 except Table 4 presents rankings by research

methodology rather than by topical area. We note that users may benefit from interpreting Table

4 in similar fashion to the way we discussed interpreting Table 3.

(Insert Table 4 about here)

Table 5 presents three different rankings that provide information about which schools

provide the greatest breadth of research expertise. In Table 4 we provide the results of averaging

the topical area rankings, averaging the methodology rankings, or averaging the topical area and

methodology rankings. Schools that focus on one or two topical areas or on a single

methodology will not rank as highly in these rankings.

As would be expected, large schools fair particularly well in the “breadth“ rankings.

These schools likely have great breadth because their size allows professors to specialize their

teaching and thus their research in areas other than financial accounting. As with Table 2, 3, and

14
4, we provide rankings over different time horizons so users can make informed decision using

these rankings.

(Insert Table 5 about here)

CONCLUSIONS

This study ranks all accounting research programs by considering publication counts in

top accounting journals. These rankings differ from most prior rankings in two important ways.

First, we provide separate research rankings by topical area (AIS, auditing, financial, managerial,

and tax) and by methodology (analytical, archival, and experimental). Second, we give

institutions credit for all research published by professors currently employed at the institution

rather than giving institutions credit for publications of faculty who published at the university

but no longer work there. These rankings should be useful to decision-makers in multiple

settings (e.g., prospective Ph.D. students, doctoral students, faculty, accounting departments,

business schools, and universities).

This study is not without limitations. We highlight the most important limitations and

caution decision-makers to consider how these limitations may impact their decision-making

setting. First, using counts to rank accounting research programs treats all articles as making

equal contributions to the literature. Counts do not take into consideration level of impact of a

particular article. Thus, faculty at an institution that produces few, highly innovative and

paradigm-altering articles may not rank as highly in these rankings as an institution that focuses

on producing a large quantity of research publications. Whether one of these strategies is “better”

in terms of producing accounting knowledge is debatable, and this research does not provide

evidence for either side of this debate.

15
 Second, we consider a basket of accounting journals that likely vary in terms of perceived

and actual quality. We do not attempt to weight articles published in different journals as being

worth more or less than other articles due to the subjective nature of determining weightings. We

carefully selected journals, choosing only those of perceived high quality (Lowensohn and

Samelson 2006; Herron and Hall 2004; Chan et al. 2009) while balancing this with the

publication patterns that previous researchers have noted some journals exhibit (Bonner et al.

2006).

Third, we do not explicitly take into account faculty size in determining our rankings; we

also employ a methodology that does not explicitly consider an institution’s ability to influence

researchers’ ability to publish by having access to such things as more and/or better databases,

providing more talented research assistants, decreasing teaching loads, or other similar

characteristics that likely improve research productivity. However, our methodology does

indirectly capture this ability as the most prolific researchers are likely aware of these

institutional advantages and more likely to work at schools that offer these advantages.

Finally, by recognizing the mobility of human capital, an excellent research school

recently “raided” of talent may receive a low ranking. It is likely that a school that establishes the

culture and financial means to be a top-tier research school will likely be able to attract high

quality researchers even if it was recently raided. Thus, some schools may appear low in our

rankings because at the time of this study they have not been able to rebuild their faculty. We

combat this problem by providing a companion website that provides regular updates of the

rankings (see Appendix for more details).

16
 Even with the limitations to this research, we view this study as providing an important

incremental contribution to the prior research ranking literature. In addition, we believe this

study will be highly useful to the academy and the professional community of accountants.

17
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19
 TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics

Panel A: Percentage of articles by topical area published in different journals

Journal AIS Audit Financial Managerial Tax Other
AOS 1% 13% 16% 39% 2% 33%
Auditing 3% 97% 19% 1% 0% 13%
BRIA 1% 35% 13% 19% 5% 37%
CAR 1% 28% 54% 15% 8% 12%
JAE 0% 6% 78% 16% 8% 5%
JAR 1% 18% 70% 13% 7% 3%
JIS 100% 18% 10% 5% 0% 0%
JMAR 0% 1% 1% 98% 1% 3%
JATA 0% 1% 28% 4% 96% 7%
RAST 0% 6% 79% 16% 4% 0%
TAR 1% 21% 58% 18% 10% 6%

Panel B: Percentage of articles by methodology published in different journals

Journal Analytical Archival Experimental Other

AOS 1% 10% 13% 77%
Auditing 3% 38% 33% 30%
BRIA 2% 1% 59% 38%
CAR 20% 52% 18% 12%
JAE 13% 83% 1% 3%
JAR 21% 64% 13% 3%
JIS 3% 12% 39% 47%
JMAR 19% 16% 16% 51%
JATA 14% 53% 21% 18%
RAST 36% 62% 3% 0%
TAR 14% 63% 21% 4%

(Continued on next page)

20
 TABLE 1 – Continued

Panel C: Percentage of articles by methodology per topical area

Topical Area Analytical Archival Experimental Other

AIS 4% 12% 36% 48%
Audit 8% 32% 38% 23%
Financial 12% 76% 7% 5%
Managerial 22% 22% 16% 40%
Tax 13% 58% 19% 10%
Other 4% 22% 16% 59%

Panel A and Panel B percentages do not add up to 100 percent as topical area and methodology
categorizations are not mutually exclusive (e.g., an article can be both financial and audit or use
both experimental and archival methodologies).

21
 TABLE 2
Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Raw Total Article Counts

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

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

22
 TABLE 3
Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Topical Area

AIS Audit
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Rutgers 1 #3 2 #4 2 #5 Fla Internat 1 #4 2 #5 8 #5
Florida St 1 #2 9 #2 9 #3 Illinois at Urb. Cham. 2 #9 5 #11 4 #13
No Carol St 3 #3 10 #3 19 #3 Northeastern 3 #6 3 #6 3 #6
Cen Fla 4 #2 4 #2 4 #3 Rutgers 4 #6 11 #7 15 #9
So Illinois 4 #3 4 #4 5 #6 Bentley 5 #5 4 #6 6 #6
Tx Tech 4 #3 6 #4 8 #4 New So Wales 5 #6 6 #10 9 #11
Portland St 4 #3 10 #3 9 #4 M issouri 5 #2 7 #2 15 #2
Cal St Long Bch 4 #1 10 #2 19 #2 Nanyang Tech 8 #4 7 #6 15 #6
No Arizona 4 #2 17 #2 14 #2 Texas A&M 9 #3 16 #4 10 #9
Auburn 4 #2 17 #2 19 #3 Kentucky 9 #3 21 #3 15 #4
Tulsa 4 #3 17 #3 28 #3 Queens 9 #4 24 #5 39 #5
Ghent U 4 #3 17 #3 28 #3 Fla Atlantic 9 #6 36 #7 32 #9
Bentley 13 #2 1 #4 1 #4 Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 9 #2 36 #2 50 #3
Ariz St 13 #1 6 #3 3 #5 Brigham Young U 14 #4 7 #8 13 #8
M ichigan St 13 #2 10 #2 9 #3 Tennessee 14 #5 7 #5 13 #5
Texas A&M 13 #1 10 #1 14 #2 Tx-Austin 14 #3 13 #6 2 #10
Georgia St 13 #2 10 #3 14 #3 Indiana Indianapolis 14 #2 14 #4 20 #5
Arkansas 13 #1 10 #1 19 #1 HongKong PolyTechnic University
14 #4 14 #7 24 #7
Okla St 13 #1 26 #1 19 #2 Temple 14 #3 21 #4 34 #4
Tennessee 13 #2 26 #2 28 #3 So Carol 14 #4 24 #4 39 #5
Houston-Cl L 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2 Wisconsin 21 #3 1 #6 5 #9
No Colo 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2 Alabama 21 #3 12 #4 24 #4
Emory 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1 Kansas 21 #3 16 #4 24 #4
M aastricht 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2 So Calif 21 #4 19 #6 6 #9
Akron 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1 Florida 21 #2 19 #4 10 #5
Kent St 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2 Alberta 21 #3 30 #4 34 #6
Hawaii-Manoa 13 #1 26 #1 40 #1 M ass 21 #3 30 #3 50 #3
Queensland 13 #2 26 #2 40 #2 Georgia 21 #4 36 #4 29 #5
M issouri 29 #1 3 #3 5 #3 Auckland 21 #4 50 #4 81 #4
So Florida 29 #1 6 #4 7 #4 Athens 21 #4 59 #4 100 #4
Kansas 29 #1 17 #3 19 #4 Georgia St 31 #4 24 #5 15 #6
Virg Comm 29 #1 17 #2 28 #2 Indiana Bloomington 31 #3 24 #5 34 #8
Delaware 29 #1 26 #1 40 #1 Toronto 31 #2 30 #2 29 #5
Temple 29 #1 26 #2 40 #2 Virginia Tech 31 #2 30 #4 44 #5
Utah 29 #1 47 #1 14 #1 Chinese HK U 31 #2 30 #5 50 #5
Iowa State 29 #1 47 #1 28 #1 Auburn 31 #3 42 #3 58 #5
Denver U 29 #1 47 #1 28 #3 No Texas 31 #3 50 #3 44 #6
Brock U 29 #1 47 #1 40 #2 Nat Taiwan U 31 #4 50 #4 68 #5
Cal St Northridge 29 #1 47 #1 40 #1 Cornell 31 #2 59 #2 12 #3
Fla Atlantic 29 #1 47 #1 68 #1 SUNY-Bingham 31 #3 59 #4 100 #4

23
 TABLE 3 - Continued

Financial Managerial
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Chicago 1 #18 3 #19 5 #21 Stanford 1 #5 2 #5 1 #5
U of Washington 2 #10 1 #12 1 #18 M ichigan St 2 #6 1 #9 2 #10
Stanford 3 #13 2 #14 2 #15 London SchEcon 3 #5 5 #8 7 #10
Tx-Austin 4 #13 5 #18 5 #20 Ohio St 4 #4 5 #7 4 #10
Duke 4 #10 7 #10 10 #10 Tilburg U 4 #5 13 #6 29 #6
M IT 6 #10 13 #13 15 #13 UCLA 4 #5 17 #5 27 #6
Penn 7 #11 4 #15 3 #17 Indiana Bloomington 7 #5 4 #6 7 #6
New York U 8 #11 6 #14 4 #15 Berkeley 7 #4 10 #5 10 #7
Penn St 9 #9 9 #11 11 #12 Pittsburgh 7 #4 13 #6 17 #6
So Calif 9 #9 12 #15 8 #19 Tx-Austin 7 #6 20 #7 37 #7
Texas A&M 9 #9 14 #12 9 #15 University of Navarra IESE7 #2 20 #2 40 #2
Iowa 9 #11 20 #11 24 #13 M ichigan 12 #4 5 #6 11 #6
Arizona 9 #10 20 #11 24 #13 So Carol 13 #5 29 #6 46 #6
London Bus 14 #6 29 #8 31 #8 So Calif 14 #4 8 #8 4 #8
Cornell 15 #6 8 #9 16 #9 M elbourne 14 #3 10 #4 7 #7
Indiana Bloomington 16 #10 15 #13 13 #16 Rice 14 #1 12 #2 21 #2
No Carol 17 #9 10 #10 7 #11 Temple 14 #2 13 #3 6 #4
Northwestern 17 #10 10 #12 11 #12 Penn St 14 #4 17 #7 21 #9
M ichigan 17 #9 17 #11 16 #14 M iami 14 #4 17 #4 29 #5
Toronto 17 #8 23 #9 27 #11 M onash U 14 #1 20 #2 14 #3
CUNY-Baruch 17 #11 25 #15 21 #22 Illinois at Urb. Cham. 14 #4 26 #6 37 #8
Illinois at Urb. Cham. 17 #8 31 #9 32 #13 Emory 14 #2 26 #3 40 #4
Ohio St 23 #9 15 #15 19 #17 Duke 14 #2 29 #4 29 #5
Rochester 23 #7 41 #7 36 #9 Georgia St 14 #2 29 #4 46 #5
Columbia 25 #8 19 #11 14 #11 Car Mellon 14 #3 37 #3 20 #7
Wisconsin 25 #6 35 #9 34 #9 Yale 14 #1 37 #3 40 #4
Utah 27 #6 30 #8 41 #8 M aastricht 14 #2 37 #2 55 #3
M issouri 27 #8 37 #9 45 #10 Leuven 14 #3 37 #3 63 #3
UCLA 29 #5 17 #7 18 #9 Louisiana Tech 14 #3 51 #3 78 #3
M ichigan St 29 #7 22 #12 26 #17 M IT 14 #3 51 #3 78 #3
Ariz St 29 #7 32 #9 20 #15 Twente 14 #2 62 #2 95 #2
Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 29 #7 32 #10 39 #11 M iss St 14 #2 62 #2 95 #2
Harvard 33 #8 23 #14 29 #17 Penn 33 #2 3 #7 3 #9
Berkeley 33 #6 25 #6 21 #7 Columbia 33 #1 8 #4 14 #4
Yale 33 #4 37 #5 44 #5 M anchester 33 #2 20 #7 21 #9
Lancaster 33 #8 47 #8 60 #8 Iowa 33 #2 29 #3 12 #5
M iami 33 #5 48 #5 64 #5 Queens 33 #2 29 #3 21 #6
M innesota 38 #6 32 #8 32 #9 Utah 33 #3 29 #4 46 #4
Houston 38 #7 37 #9 34 #10 Chicago 33 #3 37 #5 37 #5
Georgia 40 #5 28 #9 28 #10 Warwick 33 #1 37 #3 40 #3

24
 TABLE 3 - Continued

Tax
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Arizona 1 #3 1 #3 2 #3
Rankings for the top 40 schools based on the 6 year
Dartmouth 2 #2 5 #2 5 #2
window are presented. The number of authors who
Chicago 3 #3 6 #4 6 #5 contributed to the rankings are also presented (i.e.,
Iowa 3 #3 8 #3 16 #4 number after #). If there were ties at the cutoff amount,
Texas A&M 5 #2 2 #8 4 #9 the school that is presented was the highest in the 12 year
Tx-Austin 5 #2 4 #3 2 #5 category or if still a tie then the all year category (or if
Oregon 5 #2 10 #4 11 #4 still a tie, alphabetically). Time windows represent all
Georgia 8 #2 11 #3 16 #3 articles published in the previous 6, 12, or 19 years.
Geo M ason 8 #2 11 #4 24 #4
So Carol 8 #2 19 #2 24 #4
U of Washington 8 #1 19 #1 24 #2
M ichigan 8 #1 19 #1 34 #2
M issouri 8 #4 34 #4 53 #4
No Carol 14 #2 2 #5 1 #6
Brigham Young U 14 #3 7 #6 9 #6
Conn 14 #3 8 #3 8 #3
Columbia 14 #2 11 #7 21 #7
Virginia Tech 14 #3 14 #3 14 #3
Tx Tech 14 #3 15 #4 16 #5
Lingnan U 14 #3 15 #3 29 #3
Notre Dame 14 #2 19 #2 29 #3
Alabama 14 #1 19 #2 34 #3
Indiana Bloomington 14 #2 28 #4 14 #8
Virg-Grad 14 #2 28 #2 46 #2
Idaho State 14 #1 34 #1 40 #1
Kansas 14 #3 34 #3 46 #4
Laval 14 #3 34 #3 53 #3
Cen Fla 28 #1 15 #4 34 #4
M ichigan St 28 #2 19 #4 9 #8
Houston 28 #1 19 #1 16 #3
Florida St 28 #2 28 #3 40 #4
Rochester 28 #1 34 #2 53 #2
Arkansas 28 #2 34 #4 53 #4
Cal Davis 28 #1 34 #1 53 #1
Ariz St 28 #2 44 #3 13 #7
No Texas 28 #2 44 #2 65 #2
Tilburg U 28 #1 44 #1 65 #1
Pittsburgh 28 #2 58 #2 53 #2
Wyoming 28 #2 58 #2 84 #2
M iami 28 #1 58 #1 84 #1

25
 TABLE 4
Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Research Methodology

Analytical Archival
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Stanford 1 #4 1 #5 1 #7 Chicago 1 #15 3 #16 3 #19
Ohio St 2 #3 2 #5 4 #5 M IT 2 #10 15 #12 14 #12
Berkeley 2 #4 4 #4 10 #5 Stanford 3 #11 1 #12 1 #13
Dartmouth 4 #3 5 #3 8 #3 Penn 3 #10 2 #14 7 #16
UCLA 4 #4 6 #5 6 #6 U of Washington 3 #7 4 #10 4 #15
Yale 4 #1 13 #2 13 #4 Texas A&M 3 #12 5 #15 5 #18
Car Mellon 7 #3 9 #4 11 #5 Duke 3 #10 6 #10 10 #10
M innesota 7 #3 10 #4 6 #7 Arizona 3 #11 13 #12 13 #15
Indiana Indianapolis 7 #2 10 #3 15 #3 So Calif 9 #11 8 #13 5 #17
Houston 7 #5 12 #5 8 #5 Iowa 10 #13 16 #13 17 #13
Illinois at Urb. Cham. 7 #4 13 #4 18 #5 New York U 11 #11 10 #15 8 #15
Columbia 12 #2 2 #5 5 #6 Penn St 12 #9 10 #13 10 #14
Penn 12 #4 6 #4 2 #4 London Bus 13 #5 34 #6 38 #6
Northwestern 12 #2 6 #4 2 #6 No Carol 14 #9 6 #10 2 #12
Chicago 12 #4 16 #4 27 #5 M ichigan 14 #9 12 #13 16 #14
Tilburg U 12 #2 16 #3 32 #3 Tx-Austin 14 #9 14 #12 12 #13
British Colu 17 #4 23 #5 38 #5 CUNY-Baruch 14 #12 23 #15 19 #22
Duke 17 #3 23 #3 39 #3 M ichigan St 18 #9 9 #16 9 #20
Tel Aviv Un 17 #1 34 #1 46 #1 Fla Internat 18 #6 20 #8 34 #8
Ariz St 20 #1 13 #3 11 #5 Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 18 #7 31 #9 37 #10
Purdue West Lafayette 20 #3 23 #4 27 #4 Indiana Bloomington 21 #10 18 #12 22 #13
Tx-Austin 20 #2 28 #2 32 #2 Toronto 21 #9 22 #9 26 #9
Georgetown 20 #1 37 #1 58 #1 M issouri 21 #8 23 #10 34 #11
Florida 24 #2 16 #2 15 #2 Rochester 24 #7 37 #7 39 #9
Illinios at Chicago 24 #2 16 #4 20 #6 Wisconsin 25 #7 17 #12 21 #13
Penn St 24 #2 16 #2 22 #3 Utah 26 #7 27 #9 41 #9
M ichigan 24 #2 23 #4 14 #6 Temple 27 #7 18 #10 17 #11
Toronto 24 #2 28 #2 20 #6 Harvard 27 #10 20 #17 25 #19
New York U 24 #2 28 #4 32 #4 Columbia 27 #7 25 #9 22 #10
Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 24 #2 28 #3 43 #3 Ohio St 27 #9 30 #11 34 #12
CUNY-Baruch 24 #2 34 #2 24 #3 Northwestern 31 #8 25 #10 28 #11
Pittsburgh 24 #2 37 #2 27 #3 UCLA 31 #5 27 #6 28 #8
Alberta 24 #1 37 #2 39 #2 M iami 31 #6 37 #6 60 #6
Princeton 24 #1 37 #2 58 #2 So M ethodist 34 #7 36 #9 28 #12
Utah 24 #2 49 #2 46 #2 Georgia 35 #6 31 #9 20 #10
Nat Taiwan U 24 #2 49 #2 66 #2 Tx-Dallas 35 #6 31 #12 27 #12
Clark U 24 #1 49 #1 66 #1 Berkeley 35 #4 35 #5 24 #6
Fla Atlantic 24 #2 49 #2 66 #2 HongKong PolyTechnic University
35 #6 37 #9 50 #10
Aarhus Universitet 39 #1 21 #2 27 #2 Illinois at Urb. Cham. 35 #7 59 #8 50 #11
Sungkyunkwan University 39 #1 21 #1 32 #1 Geo Wash 40 #7 51 #9 41 #12

26
 TABLE 4 - Continued

Experimental
Rankings for the top 40 schools based on the 6 year window
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
are presented. The number of authors who contributed to the
Tx-Austin 1 #6 3 #10 1 #12
rankings are also presented (i.e., number after #). If there were
Cornell 1 #5 5 #5 3 #6 ties at the cutoff amount, the school that is presented was the
Indiana Bloomington 3 #6 2 #8 4 #10 highest in the 12 year category or if still a tie then the all year
Northeastern 3 #7 3 #8 5 #8 category (or if still a tie, alphabetically). Time windows
Illinois at Urb. Cham. 5 #6 6 #12 7 #13 represent all articles published in the previous 6, 12, or 19
M ichigan St 5 #6 8 #6 8 #7 years.
So Carol 5 #5 11 #5 9 #6
Brigham Young U 8 #6 1 #11 6 #11
Alabama 8 #4 7 #5 12 #5
Nanyang Tech 10 #4 8 #6 14 #6
Ariz St 10 #4 11 #8 2 #10
Emory 10 #5 13 #6 23 #6
Georgia St 13 #6 16 #6 19 #7
U of Washington 14 #3 13 #5 12 #7
Bentley 15 #2 10 #3 9 #4
Florida St 15 #4 22 #7 30 #7
Kansas 15 #3 22 #3 34 #3
Texas A&M 15 #2 26 #3 29 #6
Kentucky 19 #3 16 #4 9 #6
M ass 19 #3 18 #4 27 #4
So Illinois 19 #3 26 #4 33 #4
Georgia Tech 19 #3 31 #4 27 #4
Auburn 19 #3 33 #3 47 #4
Cen Fla 24 #3 15 #4 21 #7
Pittsburgh 24 #4 26 #4 15 #5
Georgia 24 #4 36 #5 43 #5
Leuven 24 #3 36 #3 58 #3
York U (Canada) 24 #3 36 #3 58 #3
Tilburg U 24 #2 45 #2 67 #2
New So Wales 30 #1 19 #6 16 #7
Oklahoma 30 #2 19 #6 16 #6
Wisconsin 30 #3 19 #6 16 #7
Virginia Tech 30 #2 22 #4 25 #5
Tx Tech 30 #3 22 #5 31 #5
M elbourne 30 #1 26 #3 36 #3
M issouri 30 #2 26 #3 36 #3
So Florida 30 #3 36 #5 47 #6
Iowa State 30 #2 55 #3 34 #6
No Carol St 30 #3 55 #3 36 #7
Louisiana Tech 30 #1 55 #1 67 #2

27
 TABLE 5
Rankings of Accounting Institutions by Averaging Rankings of Topical Areas, Research Methodologies, or Topic and
Methodology Combined
Average of Topic Average of Method
University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Texas A&M 1 #3 1 #5 1 #6 Tx-Austin 1 #6 1 #7 1 #8
Tx-Austin 2 #5 4 #6 4 #7 Illinois at Urb. Cham. 2 #6 2 #7 2 #8
M ichigan St 3 #4 2 #5 3 #6 U of Washington 3 #4 3 #4 2 #6
Indiana Bloomington 4 #4 6 #5 8 #6 Pittsburgh 4 #4 7 #4 12 #4
So Calif 5 #4 3 #5 2 #6 Ariz St 5 #4 5 #5 4 #7
Stanford 6 #4 14 #4 15 #5 Texas A&M 6 #5 14 #5 20 #6
So Carol 7 #3 5 #4 7 #4 Wisconsin 7 #4 6 #5 6 #6
M issouri 8 #3 7 #4 9 #4 Ohio St 8 #4 4 #5 5 #6
Georgia St 9 #3 10 #3 11 #4 M ichigan St 9 #5 9 #6 9 #7
Iowa 10 #3 17 #4 20 #4 Indiana Bloomington 10 #5 10 #6 8 #7
Emory 11 #3 9 #3 13 #4 Florida 11 #2 10 #2 10 #3
Illinois at Urb. Cham. 12 #4 8 #5 6 #6 Alberta 11 #4 12 #4 13 #5
M ichigan 13 #3 13 #4 17 #4 Arizona 13 #4 19 #4 18 #5
Chicago 13 #5 18 #6 24 #6 M issouri 14 #3 13 #4 14 #4
U of Washington 15 #3 15 #4 16 #5 Stanford 15 #5 28 #5 42 #6
Temple 16 #2 11 #3 10 #3 Florida St 16 #3 16 #4 16 #5
Ariz St 17 #3 12 #4 5 #5 Cornell 16 #3 20 #4 17 #4
M IT 18 #3 28 #3 47 #4 Georgia 18 #3 27 #4 39 #4
Utah 19 #2 21 #3 19 #3 Chicago 19 #6 17 #7 23 #7
M iami 20 #2 30 #2 52 #2 M iami 20 #3 32 #3 52 #3
Fla Internat 20 #2 39 #2 58 #2 Brigham Young U 21 #4 24 #5 34 #6
Arizona 22 #3 23 #4 22 #4 Penn 21 #5 32 #5 46 #6
Cornell 23 #2 37 #2 34 #3 HongKong PolyTechnic University
23 #3 38 #4 33 #4
Penn 24 #3 22 #4 21 #5 Duke 24 #4 14 #5 11 #5
Toronto 24 #3 29 #3 26 #3 Georgia St 24 #3 21 #4 21 #4
No Carol 26 #3 24 #3 28 #4 Tilburg U 26 #2 35 #2 47 #3
Penn St 27 #3 19 #4 18 #5 Nanyang Tech 27 #3 25 #3 32 #4
Wisconsin 28 #2 16 #3 12 #4 Emory 27 #4 29 #4 40 #4
Richmond 29 #2 45 #2 64 #2 Oklahoma 27 #2 34 #3 26 #4
HongKong PolyTechnic University
30 #2 43 #3 43 #4 So Calif 30 #4 8 #6 7 #7
Laval 30 #2 54 #2 63 #2 Kansas 30 #2 22 #2 22 #3
Ohio St 32 #3 20 #4 14 #5 Fla Atlantic 32 #3 55 #3 56 #3
Rice 33 #1 41 #2 54 #2 UCLA 33 #3 47 #3 43 #4
Queens 34 #2 31 #2 37 #3 New York U 33 #4 50 #5 61 #6
Pittsburgh 35 #2 42 #2 39 #3 Penn St 35 #4 22 #4 19 #5
Oklahoma 36 #1 25 #2 23 #2 Notre Dame 36 #2 30 #3 24 #4
Duke 37 #3 32 #3 36 #4 Berkeley 36 #3 53 #3 60 #3
Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 38 #2 52 #2 59 #3 CUNY-Baruch 38 #5 30 #5 29 #7
Alabama 39 #1 33 #2 40 #3 M ichigan 38 #4 50 #5 44 #5
M elbourne 40 #2 35 #2 32 #3 Columbia 40 #3 45 #4 57 #4

28
 TABLE 5 - Continued

Average of Topic and Method

University 6 Yrs 12 Yrs All
Rankings for the top 40 schools based on the 6 year window are
Tx-Austin 1 #5 1 #6 1 #7
presented. The number of authors who contributed to the
Texas A&M 2 #4 2 #5 4 #6
rankings are also presented (i.e., number after #). If there were
M ichigan St 3 #4 3 #6 3 #7 ties at the cutoff amount, the school that is presented was the
Indiana Bloomington 4 #4 7 #5 8 #6 highest in the 12 year category or if still a tie then the all year
Illinois at Urb. Cham. 5 #5 4 #6 6 #7 category (or if still a tie, alphabetically). Time windows
U of Washington 6 #3 6 #4 9 #5 represent all articles published in the previous 6, 12, or 19 years
Stanford 7 #4 16 #5 19 #5
M issouri 8 #3 9 #4 11 #4
So Calif 9 #4 5 #5 2 #6
Ariz St 9 #3 8 #4 5 #6
Georgia St 11 #3 12 #3 12 #4
Emory 12 #3 13 #4 16 #4
Chicago 13 #6 15 #6 21 #6
So Carol 14 #3 14 #4 17 #4
Wisconsin 15 #3 11 #4 10 #5
Arizona 16 #4 19 #4 15 #4
M ichigan 16 #3 20 #4 22 #5
Cornell 18 #2 32 #3 30 #3
Ohio St 19 #3 10 #4 7 #5
Pittsburgh 19 #2 24 #3 29 #4
M iami 19 #2 34 #2 49 #2
Penn 22 #4 21 #5 28 #5
Iowa 23 #4 29 #4 25 #4
Utah 24 #3 22 #3 18 #3
Penn St 25 #3 17 #4 14 #5
Alberta 26 #2 33 #3 41 #4
Toronto 27 #3 25 #3 20 #4
HongKong PolyTechnic University
28 #3 41 #3 39 #4
M IT 29 #3 44 #4 59 #4
Duke 30 #3 23 #4 27 #4
Oklahoma 31 #2 27 #2 24 #3
Temple 32 #2 18 #3 13 #4
Nanyang Tech 33 #2 43 #3 57 #3
Fla Internat 34 #2 58 #2 69 #2
No Carol 35 #3 36 #3 37 #4
Florida St 36 #3 28 #3 32 #4
Georgia 37 #3 49 #3 36 #4
Hong Kong Uni. of S&T 37 #2 54 #3 61 #3
UCLA 39 #2 56 #3 56 #3
Columbia 40 #2 47 #4 46 #4

29
 APPENDIX 1
Description of Companion Website

To enhance the usefulness of the descriptive data presented in this paper, we have

developed a companion website for this paper. The website is located at

http://www.byuaccounting.net/rankings/. The website provides the following:

 Complete listing of rankings for each ranking presented in this paper (not just top 40
rankings).

 Rankings of the topical by methodological area crosses (e.g., rankings of audit-

experimental, audit-archival, etc.).

 Periodically updated rankings as new journal issues are published and professors change
locations.

 Ability for users to view all institution’s rankings on a single page.

30