Accounting and Finance: authorship and citation trends

Abstract

Accounting and Finance (A&F ) has experienced a surge in published research in the last decade. The analysis here reveals a marked increase in the number of published articles in A&F since 2003, a distinct trend for published papers to have a larger number of authors, a significant and stable contribution by the top 5 Australian accounting/finance departments, as well as a notable increase in contribution from non-US foreign universities, particularly those located in the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain. An analysis of citations indicates the increasing impact of A&F in recent years.

Co‐authorship Network Analysis in the Accounting Discipline

“…() found that the percentage of co‐authored articles in accounting research increased from 58.5% in 1991 to 72.3% in 2005 in 24 academic accounting journals. Gaunt () also observes a clear trend from single to dual authorship in the 1990s; however, since 2000 there has been a shift from both single and dual authorship to three or sometimes four authors. A recent study by Andrikopoulos and Kostaris () similarly detects a substantial increase in co‐authorship rates within major accounting journals over the period 1985–2014.…”

“…). Another reason that may motivate academics to establish co‐authorships are academic institutions that measure individual academic performance by publication in peer‐reviewed journals with little distinction between whether those articles are published by a sole author or with a co‐author (Gaunt ). Therefore, academics can achieve the same benefit irrespective of the percentage of their contribution to an article (Nathan et al.…”

“…Therefore, academics can achieve the same benefit irrespective of the percentage of their contribution to an article (Nathan et al. ; Gaunt ). Further motivations cited behind increasing collaborations in scholarly publications are enhancing the quality of research output (Englebrecht et al.…”

“…Past authorship and co‐authorship studies vary in scope; some focus on single journals (Williams ; Heck and Bremser ; Anderson ; Gaunt ; Lohmann and Eulerich ), some on top journals (Swanson ; Chan et al. ; Englebrecht et al.…”

“…; Cantor et al. ; Fülbier and Weller ; Gaunt ; Koseoglu ; Andrikopoulos and Kostaris ; Lohmann and Eulerich ). The analysis of co‐authorship networks in the accounting field has become important in order to understand the progress in developing collaborations among researchers.…”