Accounting Research & Thought (ART) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal seeking to publish all paradigms of empirical and qualitative accounting research, including thought-pieces and commentaries, in the normative, positive, and critical traditions. This includes replications and “no result” findings. Meaningful contributions to the profession, education, research, theory, and fundamental accounting concepts are all equally important and welcome, no matter the paradigm. ART accepts submissions under two general tracks – completed manuscripts and registered reports. ART is intended to inform, educate, and challenge the accounting profession, academy, regulators, and standard setters. Our hope is that within ART’s pages, readers will find and engage with a true academic dialogue.
ART will provide an open-access alternative to the traditional academic journal model through new and innovative, scientifically rigorous, open, transparent, and economically incentivized methods. ART strives to engage authors, reviewers, and editors in a “human” research, review, and publishing process. ART will be an author-, reviewer-, and editor-friendly outlet of preference for the highest quality, highest impact accounting research. Scientific peer review will be rigorous, but always scientifically sound, first and foremost. Reviewers will review, not co-author. Building a scientifically sound corpus of dependable knowledge requires publication of replications, null results, and registered reports. All three will be welcome on an ongoing basis at ART and will be given the same consideration as original studies with statistically significant results. If research matters enough to perform and publish, it matters enough to plan, report, and replicate.
ART is different from traditional accounting journals in… well, in just about every way. ART is different in its review process, scientific transparency, and economic and publishing models.
ART is an always free, open-access journal. ART will NOT adhere to a publication process governed by the legacy of hardcopy publishing. ART will not have volumes and issues but rather will make individually numbered articles available via download as soon as they are accepted and ready for publication. This is intentional and meant to prevent sub-optimal, non-scientific editorial decisions to “fill” a particular issue or “save journal space.” Once the review process is complete, the incremental cost of hosting an article is approaching zero in the digital age. ART will publish all, and only, those articles deemed to be scientifically valid and rigorous and that meaningfully contribute to its mission. When new articles are available for download, ART will disseminate the title and abstract (at a minimum) through appropriate channels such as social media accounts, ART’s official website, SSRN, and potentially to a mailing list (only for those who voluntarily sign-up, we will never spam). ART publications will be hosted through an OSF branded preprint server. DOIs will be provided through the OSF system. Authors, reviewers, and editors are encouraged to publicize those articles they have contributed to, and the accounting academy as a whole is encouraged to publicize those articles they believe are of value to other academics, students, and the profession. Publications can and are encouraged to be shared freely under Creative Commons licensing (BY-NC-ND, unless otherwise requested by the author team).
ART was founded, in part, out of disgust with many aspects of the academic publishing model, including the economic models of for-profit journals. It struck the founders as ludicrous that journals should have their entire product and process funded by research institutions (and in many cases, taxpayers through state appropriations) and donated to the publisher, only for the publisher to turn around and charge the funding institutions large sums for access to the very research they originally paid for.
ART’s entire economic model is as follows:
As an open-access journal, ART will always be freely shareable and free to access through its OSF branded preprint server, which includes a 50-year data availability guarantee. However, we believe that editors’ and reviewers’ valuable time and input should be compensated, and some amount of money is required for basic operations and to offset the cost of the branded pre-print server. While the fixed annual cost of the OSF preprint server will be covered by the Culverhouse School of Accountancy ($999 up to 100 submissions annually), the variable costfunding ART requires will come from submission fees. Financial transactions such as receipt of submission fees and payments to editors, reviewers, and authors will be administered through the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse School of Accountancy.
Submission Fee: $350 per article divided as follows:
Editor: $100 flat fee per paper handled regardless of outcome. Payable on final decision.
Reviewers: Up to $200 ($100 each)
$50 for a first-round, on-time, quality review (editor-assessed)
$50 for a second-round, on-time, quality review
In the event the paper does not progress to a second round, reviewers will be paid an additional $25 on final decision.
Journal Operations: $50
Journal finances will be managed as a passthrough fund of the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse School of Accountancy. Administrative costs may be deducted from any money retained for journal operations. At least annually, the journal will remit unencumbered funds (the excess of cash on hand over accrued editor, reviewer, and author refunds after any administration fees) as a donation to the Culverhouse School of Accountancy to be used for any of the following purposes, as agreed upon by the editor-in-chief in consultation with the director of the Culverhouse School of Accountancy:
Desk rejections will refund $300 of the submission fee ($50 being retained for journal operations).
Submission Types
Submissions will fall under three categories:
Review Process – Standard Submissions
Review Process – Registered Reports
The editors encourage authors planning studies involving experiments or surveys to submit them as registered reports. Experiments and surveys are encouraged, but not required, to be submitted as registered reports. Experiments that have been publicly registered with sites such as osf.io or aspredicted.org can be submitted as normal submissions once run or as registered reports with the journal if they have not been run. Completed studies with public pre-registration will be looked upon favorably during the review process (i.e., all else equal, public pre-registration is preferred when submitting a completed study). The following details the review process for submissions as registered reports with the journal (i.e., where the study has not been run).
Invited Submissions
All articles published will include, as a linked Open Science Foundation (OSF) project, the original and any subsequent round submissions, as well as the signed review reports and editor letter from each round. On publication, the reviewers’ identities will be public. For surveys, experiments, and structured or semi-structured interviews, the instrument will also be publicly available. All articles published will also include annotated code and links to data, where applicable, in a separate appended file. Data, code, and publications will be hosted and available through a branded OSF preprint server and may be hosted and shared via the authors’, editors’, and reviewers’ institutional repositories as well. ART strongly encourages, though does not require, authors to pre-register their studies with osf.io or another similar, publicly accessible system.
ART differs from traditional accounting journals in many respects. Therefore, please keep the following in mind:
There are no format requirements for submission. Formatting requirements will be handled in the event your submission is accepted for publication.
While there are no minimum or maximum length requirements, please do your best to be concise while fully communicating your ideas.
To respect all parties’ time, including the authors’, and to maintain high standards for reviewer and editor performance, authors should expect a potentially higher-than-typical rate of desk rejections. The filtering process between the editor-in-chief, associate editors, and reviewers will be meaningful. Make sure that your paper is as good as you can make it (including copy-editing) before submitting.
In the event your submission receives a peer review (which may consist of one, two, or zero reviewers, in the event the editor believes a separate review consultation is unwarranted and chooses to act as the peer review), you will have the opportunity to formally respond to those reviews (without revising your submission) before the editor makes a first-round decision.
The peer-review process will only be double-blind through the first-round decision. After the first round, neither reviewers nor authors will be anonymous.
To respect the authors’ time, only the manuscript and, for applicable research submissions, the instrument, will be required for submission and first-round review. However, please keep in mind that, in the interest of scientific transparency, all articles published will include, as a linked OSF project, the original and any subsequent round submissions, as well as the signed review reports and editor letter from each round. On publication, the reviewers’ identities will be public. For surveys, experiments, and structured or semi-structured interviews, the instrument will also be publicly available. All articles published will also include annotated code and links to data, where applicable, in a separate appended file. Data, code, and publications will be hosted and available through the OSF Projects system and may be hosted and shared via the authors’, editors’, and reviewers’ institutional repositories as well. In keeping with being a “human” journal, the editor can make exceptions to the policy of making these items public on a case-by-case basis. For human-subjects research, authors will be expected to provide proof of IRB approval from each author or an explanation of IRB coverage or exemption for each author.
ART will strive to be an author-friendly outlet in its policies and procedures. However, authors should only submit in good faith. Desk rejections for malfeasance or perceived spam submissions will result in communication with the authors regarding the reasons the editor believes there may have been malfeasance or perceives the submission to be a spam submission. The second such instance will result in a written warning. Three instances will result in a ban on submissions for the offending author(s) for life.
All decisions to accept, reject, or retract a published paper rest solely with the editorial board and can be made for any reason they see fit.
Email submissions to: mmdoxey@ua.edu
