Accounting Researchers in Asia Pacific: A Study on Publication Productivity and Citation Analysis

Research quality and productivity are the important dimensions that affect the employability and rewards of university faculty members. Generally, the publication achievement of university faculty members can be measured by the number of papers published in reputable journals as well as the number of citations obtained from their publications. This study examines the publication productivity of accounting faculty members of Asia Pacific universities in the top accounting journals for the period 2000 to 2010. The present study also measures the publication achievement using the number of citations of the researchers’ publications in these journals for the same period based on the search from Google Scholar, Scopus and Social Science Citation Index. The study found that Hun-Tong Tan is the most productive researcher in the top 18 accounting journals, followed by R. G. Walker and Michael Bradbury. When a sub-set of the top 5 accounting journals is used, the top three researchers are Hun-Tong Tan (NTU), Clive S. Lennox (HKUST) and Robert H. Chenhall (Monash U). Using the citation count, the present study found that T.J. Wong (CUHK), Robert H. Chenhall, and Ferdinand A. Gul (Monash U) obtained the highest total citations from both Google Scholar and Scopus. However, when Social Science Citation Index is used, T.J. Wong, Robert H. Chenhall, and Hun-Tong Tan are the top three. The results of this study provide the evidence of the contributions by the Asia Pacific universities’ faculties towards high quality accounting research and publications over the last decade.