The determinants of a successful accounting manuscript: Views of the informed

Publishing academic articles is a key measure by which the performance of modern academics is judged. However, there is a surprising lack of guidance to authors about which manuscript characteristics influence journal acceptance decisions. This article reports the results of a study into the perceptions of 129 editorial board members of 87 statements relating to the publishability of manuscripts in accounting journals. The respondents indicated certain factors which enhanced the chances of publication (e.g., statistical significance, originality, appropriate statistics and application of theory) and which detracted from publication (e.g., replication, secondary data, polemic pieces, overlapping work and accessibility). Reviewers from the perspective of US journals were more concerned with statistical significance, the use of appropriate statistics, and the generalisability of samples and case studies. There was a high degree of consistency in the results. We found no systematic differences between those adopting critical as opposed to mainstream research.