Scopes of accounting journals and published papers: what do they signalize?

Our main objective is to create a framework to analyze signals sent from academic journals. The signals chosen for the framework were: journal’ scopes; and the latest published papers. We apply the framework to the field of accounting with the main focus of categorizing the journal scopes and the latest published articles into research topics by using text mining techniques. We analyze the published papers of research topics in accounting journals during the 2016–2018 period. Another objective is to compare research topics from the last published papers with research topics identified in accounting journal scopes. We found a majority of journals with a broader scope in terms of accounting research areas, but we see a concentration on specific research topics by analyzing the papers. In addition, the most signaled accounting areas in scopes are financial accounting and auditing. The framework helps us categorize 5270 research papers into accounting research topics correctly, faster than manually reading titles, abstracts, and keywords. While specific scopes may carry the risk of missing new research trends, broad scopes may require more reviewers from different research areas. Diversity can be seen as applying other methodological choices, theoretical lenses, and conceptual or empirical research approaches. We believe that academic diversity is for the benefit of accounting research.