The Accounting Historians Journal is an international journal that addresses the development of accounting thought and practice. AHJ embraces all subject matter related to accounting history, including, but not limited to, research that provides a historical perspective on contemporary accounting issues.

Authors may find the following guidelines helpful:

1. Authors should provide a clear specification of the research issue or problem addressed and the motivation for the study.
2. Authors should describe the method employed in the research, indicating the extent and manner in which they intend to employ the methodology. Manuscripts that draw on a variety of conceptual frameworks and techniques, including those used in other social sciences are encouraged.
3. Authors who use a critical or new theoretical framework to examine prior historical interpretations of the development of accounting thought or practice should include a discussion of the rationale for use of that framework in the manuscript.
4. In performing all analyses, authors should be sensitive to and take adequate account of the social, political, and economic contexts of the time period examined and of other environmental factors.
5. While historians have long debated the ability to assign causation to particular factors, we encourage authors to address and evaluate the probable influences related to the problem or issue examined.
6. Authors should clearly state all their interpretations of results, and the conclusions they draw should be consistent with the original objectives of and data used in the study. Interpretations and conclusions should be clearly linked to the research problem. Authors also should state the implications of the study for future research.

In addition to scholarly work, the Editor(s) welcome submissions to the Salmagundi section of the journal. In this section, the editors seek responses to past articles, book reviews, items of general interest to our community of historians, historical syllabi, and exploratory historical work. Thought pieces or work found in other sources that may enrich our readership will also be considered (Authors are responsible for obtaining proper copyright permissions). Items in this section will be editorially reviewed. These submissions should be considerably shorter than main articles.

SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

The following guidelines should be followed for submitting manuscripts:

1. Manuscripts are submitted using the Manuscript Submission and Peer Review System, at https://www.editorialmanager.com/aahj. The site contains detailed instructions regarding the preparation of files for submission. To ensure anonymous review, the title page is to be submitted as a separate file from the manuscript text.
2. Manuscripts under consideration by another journal or other publisher should not be submitted. The submitting author will be asked to verify this during the web-based submission process.
3. For manuscripts that report on field surveys or experiments: Please ensure that reporting descriptive statistics, models, and tests of hypotheses is complete. For experimental papers, this would generally include: (1) reporting standard deviation and cell sizes in any tables of means; (2) including degrees of freedom along with any reported test statistics that have degrees of freedom, whether in the tables, footnotes, or text; and (3) ensuring ANOVA, MANOVA, ANCOVA, etc. tables are complete, including all estimated terms, including the error term, along with the associated degrees of freedom. Note that if test statistics and associated degrees of freedom are reported in the tables, then authors need not repeat this material in the text. For example, authors could provide only the p-values for effects (tests) of interest in the text, if desired. If the additional documentation (e.g., questionnaire, case, interview schedule) is sent as a separate file, then all information that might identify the author(s) must be deleted from the instrument.
4. Manuscripts that report experiments utilizing human subjects must verify approval by the institution at which the experiment took place. Notation of approval should be made within the manuscript. In addition, the submitting author will be asked to verify approval during the web-based submission process. For the full version, please see: Policy on Publication Ethics: Human Subjects Research.
5. Authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing any conflict of interest that could be perceived to bias their work. Conflict of interest disclosures include, but are not limited to, grants or research funding, employment, affiliations, honoraria, stock options/ownership, royalties, consultancies, inventions, and patents. Authors will be asked to provide any potential conflicts of interest during manuscript submission.
6. Authors are also responsible for disclosing any potential conflict of interest that might prevent an unbiased review. Potential conflicts for editor or reviewer assignments are described in the policy section below; however, this may not be an exhaustive list. Authors are requested to complete and submit an Author Conflict of Interest form upon submission.
7. There is no submission fee to submit to Accounting Historians Journal.
8. Revisions should be submitted within 12 months from the request, otherwise they will be considered new submissions.
9. All decisions are final and not subject to appeal.

REVIEW PROCESS

The review process consists of the following:

1. The editor reviews the submitted manuscript for proper format and consistency with the mission of the journal. The author(s) is notified if the manuscript is deemed inappropriate for further consideration.
2. Manuscripts that pass the initial review are sent to an associate editor and a minimum of two reviewers for formal review.
3. The editor evaluates comments and recommendations of the reviewers and the associate editor and informs the author(s) of the decision regarding the publication of the manuscript (reject, accept, or revise/resubmit). The editor’s decision and comments, without identifying information, are forwarded to the associate editor and reviewers.
4. Requested revisions are returned to the same reviewers. In addition to the revised manuscript, the author(s) should submit responses to the reviewer comments that restate the comments and identify how and where the comment is addressed in the revision.
5. The process will continue as described above until a final publication decision is made.
6. Consistent with our Publications Ethics policy on plagiarism, all articles are automatically processed through CrossCheck prior to publication to identify text taken from published and unpublished works, print or digital, that is not properly cited or quoted. For full version, please see: Policy on Publication Ethics: Plagiarism.

The review, as outlined above, is an overview of the actual process. The editor may, in some circumstances, vary this process at his or her discretion. Through its constructive and responsive editorial procedures, the journal aims to render research efforts relevant and rewarding for all concerned.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

To promote the objective handling of papers under review, AHJ takes steps to prevent Editors and reviewers from handling papers by authors with whom they have a conflict of interest. Because a variety of circumstances can result in a loss of objectivity with respect to a particular paper, judgment is necessary to identify conflicts of interest. However, a conflict of interest is presumed to exist when an Editor or reviewer: (1) is an author of the paper; (2) has a personal relationship with an author that prevents the Editor or reviewer from being objective; (3) chaired an author’s dissertation committee or an author chaired the dissertation committee of the Editor or reviewer; (4) works at the same institution as an author, or worked at the same institution within the last five years; or (5) has co-authored a paper with an author. An Editor also is presumed to have a conflict of interest with a paper when that Editor had editorial decision rights on a previous version of the paper at another journal.

When an Editor has a conflict of interest with a paper, the Senior Editor will assign a non-conflicted Editor to handle the paper unless the Senior Editor is an author of the paper, in which case a non-conflicted Editor will assign a non-conflicted Editor to handle the paper. If necessary, an ad hoc Editor will be assigned to handle the paper. The conflicted Editor will have no access to AHJ information about the paper. Because of the double-blind review process, it is primarily the responsibility of the Senior Editor and other Editors to identify conflicts of interest. Should a reviewer suspect a conflict of interest, it is the reviewer’s responsibility to alert the Senior Editor or another Editor to the potential conflict. If a conflict arises during the review process, the Senior Editor will oversee a change in Editor or reviewers, as appropriate.

Updated September 2023