US doctoral students' familiarity with accounting journals: insights into the structure of the US academy

The academic journal is the primary means through which a discipline defines its content and communicates that content among its members. In the last few years the number and diversity of accounting journals has grown quite substantially as the field of accounting takes on the low paradigm consensus characteristics of many other social sciences. This paper reports the results of a survey of doctoral students enrolled in US Ph.D. programs as to their familiarity with various journals reflecting the current intellectual diversity of the field. Results indicate that familiarity is generally low with anything other than the traditionally regarded “premier” journals, but it is lowest among those doctoral students enrolled in the most “elite” programs. The paper concludes with a discussion the implications of this lack of familiarity for doctoral education and for the progress accounting can make as an academic discipline.