Submission & Review Process

The review process

EAA adopts a number of rules and requirements aimed to ensure the quality of the review process and high academic standards for the papers to be presented. The Scientific Committee includes more than 250 members, who are academics with relevant experience in their respective fields. Without their voluntary support, the review process would simply not be possible. The submission categories seek to convey a clear picture of the topics and research methods. Also, a clear scoring methodology allows to assist reviewers in the review process. Finally, sessions with experts in the field acting as discussant of papers are scheduled for an increasing number of papers. All these provisions are aimed at ensuring a smooth review process, a good quality of selected papers, as well as relevant feedback to authors during the conference.

With the aim to improve the academic profile of the EAA annual congresses, the SSC has been implementing new changes during the last few years. These range from the requirement of full papers only to the introduction of discussants for papers of particular interest. The review process has also been improved. Not only has the SC gradually been increased up to 250 members, including the SSC members, but the scoring methodology has also been refined and included on this website (see below). Moreover, the submission categories have been gradually revised to obtain a clearer picture of the topics and research methods. In our view this will not only improve the review process but also the organisation of the sessions.

Submission categories

In order to increase the dialogue amongst various research perspectives, and to avoid the creation of dogmatic paradigms, the SSC employs a submission procedure that tries to capture both the topic and method of a submitted paper. In this way, sessions could be organised according to topics but each author/paper will carry a ‘key’ identifying the research method/perspective that the author thinks better describes the paper. This will facilitate the work of the SSC in preparing sessions and will make it possible to combine in a session papers in different ways (e.g. keeping homogeneity of methods or mixing them as they deal with the same topic). The result will hopefully be interesting as comparison of approaches is now possible.

Consequently authors are invited to submit papers to any of the categories indicated below:

A) Subject/Topic of the paper submitted:

AU = Auditing 
Submissions in the area of auditing and assurance.

ED = Accounting Education 
Submissions dealing with any educational aspects of accounting, for example related to professional accountants, students, and pupils, but also institutions of education.

FA = Financial Analysis
Submissions in the area of financial accounting which focus on the users; it uses a set of methods to extract information from financial statements and other sources information and relate it to value of equity and debt investment and to interests of other stakeholders.

FR = Financial Reporting 
Submission in the area of financial accounting which focus on the preparers; it analyses the choices and methods concerning the preparation of financial statements, taking into account firm characteristics, accounting standards, as well as institutions.

GV = Accounting and Governance 
Submissions which relate to the interface between corporate governance and accounting.

HI = History
Submissions which adopt an historical perspective, and investigate historical issues of accounting thought and practices.

IC = Interdisciplinary/Critical
Submissions that draw on more than one discipline, ideally exploring their interrelations, or that draw on any of the various strands of critical theory.

IS = Accounting and Information Systems 
Submissions in the area of the interface between accounting, information technology and systems.

MA = Management Accounting
Submissions in the area of management accounting and control systems.

PSNP = Public Sector Accounting & Not-For-Profit Accounting
Submissions on accounting in the public and voluntary sectors.

SEE = Social and Environmental Accounting & Ethical Issues in Accounting
Submissions dealing with all aspects of social and environmental accounting.

TX = Taxation 
Submissions on the subject of taxation.


B) Methodology/Perspective that betters describes the paper submitted:

AM = Analytical/Modelling
Submissions which derive their conclusions by an explicit analysis of mathematical models or other concrete specifications of economic relationships (e.g., graphics).

CDIH = Conceptual Development/Interpretative/Historical
Submissions which discuss the purposes of and/or definitions of and/or relationships among concepts and/or apply methodology related to historical perspectives.

CF = Case/Field Study
Submissions which utilise the case study method or conduct field study research through various methodologies (e.g. ethnographies).

EA = Empirical Archival 
Submissions which involve the testing of a statistical hypothesis to answer the research question (s); a data base is normally used.

EX = Experimental
Submissions which utilise an experimental design to address the research question(s).

SU = Survey
Submissions which utilise a survey methodology to address the research

Types of sessions

Regarding the 2020 conference, there will be three types of sessions:

1. Parallel Session with Discussant (PSD), where selected relevant papers will be individually discussed by experts in the area (2 papers in each session);
2. Parallel Session (PS), that will include 3 papers in a normal session; and,
3. Research Forum Session (RF), where 5 papers which need further development will be briefly presented in each session.

The decision to be included in each of these sessions will be made by the SSC taking into account the scores obtained in the review process.

If your paper is accepted for a PSD session, you are expected to be a discussant for another paper.

Review instructions

To 'anchor' the grading of the papers to be presented at the congress, the following assumption will be made: be ready for submission to a journal like European Accounting Review (EAR) or Accounting in Europe (AinE). If so they will score a 4 in the scoring system outlined below. As the 4 is the reference level we now give more information on what 4 would represent for papers submitted, but first keep in mind the definition of full papers provided above.

To achieve a 4, a full paper defined submitted should:

a) present a coherent argument,
b) address a topic of research interest and importance,
c) display awareness of previous work in the area,
d) outline a valid research approach,
e) include evidence and/or arguments which, although possibly incomplete, appear reliable, and
f ) indicate awareness of the work which may still be required.

Based on the 'anchor', the scoring system is:

6 → The paper has very good chances in the review process of a good accounting journal (e.g. EAR or AinE).
5 → The paper has good chances in the review process of a good accounting journal (e.g. EAR or AinE).
4 → The paper could reasonably be submitted to a journal like EAR or AinE.
3 → Not yet ready for submission.
2 → Represents initial work on a potentially viable project, but is not likely to be ready for submission
       for some time.
1 → The submitted work does not, as yet, provide evidence of a viable research project.

The reviewers’ comments, when available, will be systematically released to the authors. However, comments from the reviewers will not be compulsory and authors should not expect the same type of comments made when submitting to a journal.

Should you have questions, please contact Baha Diyarov, the EAA 2020 Paper Review Coordinator, via e-mail (submissions@eaacongress.org).