Accounting Research by Canadian Higher Education Institutions: A Retrospective Assessment

This study examines the accounting research among Canadian higher education institutions over the last two decades (1991-2010). Overall, thirty-eight Canadian universities contribute 4.1% of all publications in 28 leading accounting journals. The five most productive universities are the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, the University of Waterloo, and Simon Fraser University. Compared with their counterparts in Australia and the U.K., leading Canadian universities are not as productive concerning overall publication in accounting journals. However, when examining only the top six premium accounting journals, leading Canadian universities clearly outperform their counterparts in Australia and the U.K.


Introduction
The assessment of academic research productivity is a research subject that has received continuous attention over time.As suggested in Chan, Chang, and Chen (2011), the results of assessment are useful to national governments, administrators, employers, faculty, students, and donors in making assorted decisions.For instance, the United Kingdom regularly conducts research assessment exercises to gauge the performance of its higher education institutions and uses the findings to help research funding allocation.Australia, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, applying the U.K. model, conduct their own research assessment exercises as well.Evidently, higher education institutions use the results of assessment to promote their programs; faculty members, needless to say, leverage good assessment outcomes to advance their careers.
Typically, research assessment exercises are conducted in short intervals (such as every five years) across academic disciplines.The lack of specific disciplinary focus makes the results overly general and less informative to various constituents; the short-interval conduct, on the other hand, limits the generalizability of the results.Richardson and Williams (1990) and McConomy and Mathieu (2003) analyze research productivity of Canadian accounting researchers using articles published in the top-ten accounting journals.Their studies are conducted in medium intervals between ten to fifteen years.Be that as it may, existing literature has been limited in long-ranged study based on a comprehensive list of journals that is dedicated to the assessment of Canadian accounting research.

Literature in Accounting Program Assessment
The literature in accounting program assessment has three principal clusters.The first cluster studies the performance of North American higher education institutions.Among them are Hasselback and Reinstein (1995), Brown (1996), and Stammerjohan and Hall (2002), which examine accounting program rankings using the number of published articles by current accounting faculty, citations, and doctoral candidates' placement, respectively.
The second cluster of literature expands the North American studies to a global context.For instance, Chan, Chen, and Cheng (2007) examine publication records of 24 accounting journals during 1991-2005 and provide a global ranking of higher education institutions in accounting.Coyne et al. (2010) conduct an analysis of 11 highly regarded accounting journals and provide a ranking of accounting programs with respect to different sub-areas of accounting and research methods.Stephens et al. (2010) produce a ranking similar to Coyne et al. (2010), but use the research productivity of doctoral graduates from the accounting programs.Coyne et al. (2010) and Stephen et al. (2010), however, subjectively classify articles into the accounting sub-areas and research methods.In addition, both Coyne et al. (2010) and Stephen et al. (2010) do not provide ranking statistics, making it difficult to determine the progress of a specific accounting program over the years in terms of the level of research output.
The third cluster of literature focuses on a specific geographical region other than North America.Over the last two decades, competition for government funding among European and Asian higher education institutions has intensified.An objective assessment study within the region can signify higher education institutions' research performance and thus aid them in funding decisions.Chan, Chen, and Cheng (2005) offer such an assessment among the Asia-Pacific higher education institutions; they later provide a similar study in the European region (Chan, Chen, & Cheng, 2006).

Literature of Research Productivity in Canada
Several studies have examined Canadian research productivity in a choice of business disciplines.On the subject of financial research, Booth and Heath (1990) offer an early study on the research productivity of Canadian finance departments.Due to the use of current faculty composition, Booth and Heath limit their scope to the 1988-1989 academic years.In a more recent study, Chan, Chang, and Chen (2011) present a long-term assessment of financial research productivity among Canadian scholars and institutions.Concerning economic research in Canada, Lucas (1995) and Davies, Kocher, and Sutter (2008) provide detailed analyses and find that Canadian university research output was ranked third in the world in the top ten economics journals during 1980-2000.Nevertheless, the relative scholarly output share of Canadian universities in economic research declined in the 1990s.In the disciplines of international business and information systems, Rugman (2008) offers a thorough qualitative discussion on the development of international business research in Canada since the 1970s, while Serenko, Cocosila, and Turel (2008) examine the citations of information system research articles collected in the conference proceedings of Administrative Sciences Association of Canada during 1974Canada during -2007. .Concerning accounting research in Canada, Richardson and Williams (1990) examine the productivity of Canadian academic accountants through analyses of articles published in ten refereed journals between 1976 and 1989.In a later study, McConomy and Mathieu (2003) examine the research productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities for the eleven-year period from 1990-2000.Their analyses, like those in Richardson and Williams'(1990) study, were based on the top ten ranked refereed journals in accounting, auditing and taxation.As an extension of this line of studies, we use a broader set of journals to provide an up-to-date review of the accounting research productivity among Canadian higher education institutions.

Data and Method
We collect the information on authors and their affiliations from 28 accounting journals during 1991 to 2010.The full list of the journals is shown in Table 1.These journals were consistently ranked by prior studies, e.g., Hasselback, Reinstain, and Schwan (2003), Ballas and Theoharakis (2003), Herren and Hall (2005), Lowe and Locke (2005), Beattie and Goodacre (2006), Bonner, Hesford, and Young (2006), and Cook, Raviv, and Richardson (2010), as high quality accounting journals.In addition to the literature, we consider lists of credible journals from authoritative organizations such as the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC).These 28 journals include journals with a general scope (e.g.Accounting Review) as well as specialized journals, such as Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory and Behavioral Research in Accounting.The inclusion of journals with general scope and journals with specialty takes into account the research productivity of faculty with respect to their different research interests and expertise.Although many of the 28 journals are US-edited journals, we watchfully include 14 journals that are edited outside the USA to reduce any perceived US bias.In terms of making weighting adjustment to the data, we follow Chan, Chen, and Cheng (2007) to weight each article by the number of coauthors (N) and co-affiliations (M).For instance, if Authors A and B coauthor an article and A is affiliated with Institution X and B is affiliated with Institutions Y and Z, then Author A and Author B each receives 0.5 individual credit, Institution X receives 0.5 institutional credit, and Institutions Y and Z each receives 0.25 institutional credit.We apply the weighting scheme and use the weighted number of articles as the primary measurement of research productivity.To address the apprehension that not all journals are equal in quality, we provide an alternative assessment by using six premier accounting journals (Accounting, Organizations, and Society, the Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, and Review of Accounting Studies).These premier accounting journals are the journals commonly classified as "A*" journals.For example, the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) ranked these journals as premium A* journals.Cook, Riviv, and Richardson (2010) also identified these journals as being consistently ranked as the top six accounting journals by prior ranking studies.
non-accounting journals.In addition, articles published in accounting journals by non-accounting faculty members are included in our data set.These articles, while not authored by accounting staff members, also enhance the general reputation of the accounting programs in their institutions.As a result, the overall bias, if any, should be nominal.

Results
Table 1 presents the by-journal accounting research productivity among Canadian higher education institutions during 1991-2010.Overall, the 28 accounting journals publish a total of 13,493 weighted articles during the period.Noteworthy is that growth is more steady and obvious in the most recent 10 years.Australia also showed a steady increase in publications over the study period.On the contrary, while the U.S. and the U.K. institutions publish a large number of weighted articles, they do not show noticeable growth in yearly weighted articles over the study period except for a few upwellings in the last few years.We plot the results of Table 2 in Figure 1.Worth mentioning is that the progress of accounting research among Canadian institutions is broadly consistent with the findings of Chan, Chang, and Chen (2011) regarding the financial research in Canada.In Table 3, we provide a closer look at the research performance of contributing Canadian universities.The ranking is based on the total weighted number of articles for the full sample period, though the un-weighted total appearances are also disclosed in the table as a reference.The top-five Canadian universities are the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, the University of Waterloo, and Simon Fraser University.Table 3 also presents an alternative ranking based on the six premier accounting journals.
Ranked by the weighted numbers of articles published in the six premier accounting journals, the five most productive Canadian universities are the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, the University of Waterloo, the University of Toronto, and the University of Calgary.Different universities have different faculty sizes which may impact the accounting research productivity.Hence, we report the size of the accounting faculty in Table 3 and calculate the weighted-articles per faculty in the last column (Note 1).The University of Calgary has 4.31 weighted articles per faculty, which is the best among all Canadian universities.The University of Alberta and Simon Fraser University are close behind with 3.50 and 3.14 weighted articles per faculty, respectively.Overall, the top 10 universities in total weighted number of articles are also the leading universities in terms of weighted number of articles per faculty with only slight changes in relative ranking.
The comprehensive database offers us an opportunity to examine the change in research output over different periods.We partition the periods into two sub-periods (1991-2000 and 2001-2010) and calculate the percentage change in the weighted number of articles.The percentage change between the two sub-periods is shown in column 5 of Table 4.Among all contributing universities, a number of them prove sizable increase in publications from the first to the second sub-period.Examples are the University of Toronto (+151.5%),York University (+176.1%),Queen's University (+175.3%),and Laval University (+180.0%).Others, like the University of Quebec, McGill University, the University of Ottawa, the University of Windsor, Memorial University Newfoundland, and the University of Lethbridge, have also more than doubled their accounting research publications.
Table 5 compares the leading universities in Canada, Australia, and the U.K. in accounting research.Using 28 journals, the top two Canadian universities would have been ranked seventh and eighth in Australia and sixth and seventh in the U.K. When we use only the six premier journals, however, the top two Canadian universities would have been ranked the first and second in Australia.When compared with the U.K., the top four universities in Canada would have been first through fourth in the U.K as well.These results suggest that though top-ranked Canadian universities may not be as productive as their counterparts in Australia and the U.K. in overall accounting publications, they are equally or more successful in publishing in the premium accounting journals.An interesting finding of this study is that leading Canadian universities, while less productive than leading universities in Australia and the U.K. in accounting research productivity on the whole, publish more articles in the top six accounting journals.This may be driven by the tenure and promotion policies of leading Canadian universities, which reflect the current prominence of an exclusive focus on the top journals.Whereas the emphasis on academic research publications are under increasing scrutiny, prior studies have documented that publication requirements for promotion and tenure have been not only increased, but also more constrained over time (Cargile & Bublitz, 1986;Campbell & Morgan, 1987;Milne & Vent, 1987;Englebrech et al., 1994;Read et al., 1998).The reward structure for promotion and tenure, being the most important driver of faculty research productivity, can be effectively employed by Canadian institutions and accounting programs to influence faculty research behavior (Fox, 1985).
Our study has two limitations.First, we examine Canadian researchers' output in a set of accounting journals.Some researchers may publish their work in leading journals in other disciplines.We, nevertheless, do not account for these research works.Second, using a top six accounting journals approach to capture the publication quality assumes the remaining 22 journals carry a zero weight.A better approach may be to develop a scale to weigh all journals together.Although weighting journals is almost always subject to arbitration and subjectivity, future research can be dedicated to overcoming this limitation.
In conclusion, this study offers information on research productivity assessment that can be used to gauge research performance of accounting programs in Canadian institutions.Various constituents may find this assessment useful in making or adjusting their promotion, tenure, merit, enrollment, employment, and resource allocation decisions.Overall, Canadian universities have been successful in producing accounting research over the past two decades.While many exhibit positive growth, a few prove sizable increase in research productivity.By actively creating a positive institutional environment (e.g., adequate financial support, longer probationary periods, reduced teaching loads, and augmented time allocated to research related activities), accounting departments of Canadian institutions can advance intellectual activities and improve research productivity, hence make further contributions to the accounting literature.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.A Trend of Canadian Accounting Research Output in Total Weighted Number of Articles
Among them, 551.68 weighted articles or 4.1% of the total are contributed by Canadian institutions.In terms of the by-journal percentage share (percentage of total weighted articles published by Canadian institutions within each journal), Canadian institutions are most successful in publishing in the Contemporary Accounting Research (17.2%), the Accounting Organizations and Society (9.2%), the Journal of Accounting Literature (7.5%), and the Behavioral Research in Accounting (7.0%).Table2presents the yearly trend of the Canadian accounting research productivity measured by weighted articles.For benchmarking, we also include the weighted articles of Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. in the table.Across the 20 year study period, Canada published a total 551.68 weighted articles, falling behind the U.S., U.K., and Australia.Comparing the average weighted articles per academic institution, Canadian higher education institutions are less productive than their Australian and U.K. counterparts, yet are more productive than the U.S. institutions.Concerning the trend over time, Canadian institutions' research productivity starts from 16.67 weighted articles in 1991 and ends at 40.58 weighted articles in 2010.

Table 2 .
By-Year Canadian Accounting Research Productivity in Total Weighted Number of Articles

Table 3 .
A Ranking of Canadian Universities in AccountingResearch (1991Research ( -2010)   ) Description: Table3presents the accounting research productivity among Canadian universities as of June 1, 2011.The ranking metric is weighted number of articles (total number of articles weighted by number of coauthors and co-affiliations).

Table 4 .
Chan, Chang, and Chen (2011)2008)ties' Accounting Research Productivity Using the publication records in 28 leading accounting journals during 1991-2010, we provide a general assessment of accounting research performance among Canadian universities.As a group, Canadian universities perform very well in terms of the percentage share of research output.Specifically, Canadian universities account for 4.1% of all research output and the weighted number of articles increases from 16.67 in 1991 to 40.58 in 2010.Benchmarking the performance of leading Canadian universities with their counterparts in Australia and the U.K., we find that leading Canadian universities, such as the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia, are less productive concerning the overall publications in accounting journals; they, nonetheless, are more productive in publishing in the top six accounting journals.Concerning the contributing factors, our complementary analysis suggests that the sufficiency of research funding and the assembly of a cohort of research-active faculty can positively contribute to the research productivity of accounting programs in Canada.(Note2)Across the 20 year study period, the overall percentage of articles contributed by Canadian universities is 4.1%.Though the average weighted number of articles increases from 16.67 in 1991 to 40.58 in 2010, it remained in the low twenties for the majority of the years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.The genuine growth did not materialize until 2004 and after.In fact, the static inclination in research productivity began in 1995 and the rebound does not occur until 2003 and after.One possible reason for the lethargy in research productivity is the shrinkage of research funding in the late 1990s, which coincides with the general funding decline dilemma discussed inDavies, Kocher, and Sutter (2008)(Note 3) andChan, Chang, and Chen (2011).Another possible reason is the unfavorable Canadian to U.S. dollar exchange rate during the late 1990s and early 2000s, which made it difficult for Canadian schools to recruit new/competitive faculty.(Note 4)