Abstract:
BACKGROUND : This study analyses the accounting research articles published by South African
journals.
AIM AND SETTING : A review of accounting research in internationalising journals in the South
African region that publish accounting research.
METHODS : The characteristics of accounting articles were analysed. Five journals were
analysed, including the four internationalising journals, Investment Analysts Journal, Meditari
Accountancy Research, South African Journal of Business Management, and South African Journal of
Economic and Management Sciences and one local journal, South African Journal of Accounting
Research (SAJAR).
RESULTS : The findings of this study will be of interest to journal editors, authors who would
like their research to make an impact and be cited, as well as university research administrators
and government higher education policy-makers.
CONCLUSION : The analyses show that many of the highly cited articles have been published
recently, boding well for the citation statistics of these journals in future and indicating some
success in their efforts to internationalise. The citations of SAJAR lag behind the citations of the
internationalising journals. Each journal publishes articles that cover different subject area(s).
Within accounting research, accounting education and social and environmental accounting
are popular areas of research, whereas taxation; the public sector; and management accounting
are not well represented among published articles during 2015–2016 in these five journals.
About half of all accounting articles claim their insights will contribute to the accounting
literature, with much smaller percentages claiming to contribute to management, policymaking
and practice. The most prolific authors and most prominent universities to some
extent follow the most popular subject areas, with a social and environmental researcher, Warren Maroun, featuring strongly, and his university, the University of the Witwatersrand,
being prominent. Large proportions of authors of 2015–2016 articles are from outside of Africa,
speaking to the success of the internationalisation efforts of the internationalising journals,
whereas SAJAR mostly publishes articles by African authors.
