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The institution of an annual series devoted to current and ongoing research in economics and business should be considered one of the notable developments during the period under review. Long standing need for such a reference not withstanding, there has been until this year no systematic attempt to organize a continuing series which concentrated on selected areas of ongoing research, especially adapted to the Jahrbucher format. By facilitating the publication of research papers which are longer than the conventional journal‐length article yet shorter than a monograph, publishing outlets available to scholars in the field have been infinitely expanded. Two years ago, the Royal Economic Society and the Social Science Research Council of Great Britain, developed an experimental series, published by Macmillan, entitled Surveys of Applied Economics. The JAI Press, Greenwich, Conn., has now come out with an annual series, which is expected to fill the gaps in at least seventeen areas of economic theory and business. These are briefly listed below, with pertinent bibliographical citations: Research in Economic Anthropology: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, George Dalton. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.00 ISBN 0‐89232‐040‐9; Research in Economic History: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul Uselding. vol. 1. Sept. 1976‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐001‐X; Research in Health Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Richard M. Scheffler. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐042‐7; Research in Human Capital and Development: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Ismail Sirageldin. vol. 1. June/July 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐019‐2; Research in International Business and Finance: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Robert G. Hawkins. vol. 1. May/June 1977‐ $23.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐031‐1; Research in Labor Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Ronald G. Ehrenberg. vol. 1. March 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐017‐6; Research in Law and Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Richard O. Zerbe. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐028‐1; Research in Marketing: An Annual Compilation in Research. Series editor, Jagdish N. Sheth. vol. 1. June 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐041‐9; Research in Philosophy and Technology: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul T. Durbin. vol. 1. March 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐022‐2; Research in Political Economy: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Paul Zarembka. vol. 1. Sept. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐020‐6; Research in Population Economics: An Annual Compilation of Research. Series editor, Julian L. Simon. vol. 1. April 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐018‐4; Applications of Management Science. Series editor, Matthew J. Sobel. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50. ISBN 0‐89232‐023‐0; Research in Econometrics. Series editor, Dennis J. Aigner. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐039‐7; Research in Experimental Economics. Series editor, Vernon L. Smith. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐030‐3; Research in Finance. Series editor, Haim Levy. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐043‐5; Research in Organizational Behavior. Series editor, Barry Staw. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐045‐1; Research in Public Policy and Management. Series editor, Colin Blaydon. vol. 1. 1977‐ $22.50 ISBN 0‐89232‐044‐3.

Editorial boards of academic journals represent a key institutional mechanism in the governance and functioning of the academic community. Board members play an important role in knowledge production and development of the discipline. The purpose of this paper is to enquire into the diversity characteristics of boards of accounting journals.

Drawing on a diversity framework that distinguishes between societal diversity and value of diversity, the paper examines two board characteristics: gender diversity and internationalisation. Moreover, it examines the influence of three journal and two editor characteristics on board diversity and analyses trends over time.

On gender, overall board trends are consistent with societal diversity and value of diversity: boards reflect the gender profile of senior academics. Further, female representation on boards is broadly consistent across the different journal nationalities; has improved over time; has experienced a convergence in “gender sensitive” sub-disciplines; and is influenced by female editorship. However, inequities appear to be present at the highest level: women appear to be less well represented than men as editors and women also have a lower representation on boards of higher ranked journals than on those of lower ranked journals. On internationalisation, once again, overall trends broadly reflect societal diversity and value at diversity. However, international scholars are less well represented on 4* boards than on 2* and 3* boards and on US boards than on Australian and UK boards. Further, there are signs of weakening US dominance in non-US journals.

Drawing on the diversity framework, this is the first study to comprehensively examine gender diversity and internationalisation of accounting boards.

Considering the centrality of the editor-in-chief in the scientific editorial process, this research aimed to investigate what are (if any) the gaps in the current competencies and the future competencies of this professional, according to the evolution of the journals business model.

The qualitative research method was used, seeking a deeper understanding of the studied group and their professional skills in a practical way. The epistemological approach of pragmatism was adopted, and the semi-structured interview technique was used with a sample of 29 interviews.

The survey results revealed that the editor-in-chief learns his métier on a daily basis, on-the-job, as a result of a lack of prior preparation, due to the absence of structured training of these professionals. The study showed a change in the competencies of the editor-in-chief, but influenced beyond the scientific business model, involving a broader contemporary scenario of high complexity. Finally, it also contributes by highlighting important skills trends for the editor-in-chief.

It is expected that the results of this research will contribute to institutionalize training and skills development programs for the editor-in-chief and, consequently, for professionalization for the editor-in-chief.

This study deals, for the first time, specifically with the editor-in-chief's skills, where other studies focus on role, functions and responsibilities.

The purpose of this paper is to report successful authors’ views about the editorial review processes of a set of 42 accounting journals. The two main objectives are: to enlighten editors and journal publishers in their quest to improve their journals’ editorial review processes and to inform prospective authors about the past experiences successful authors have had with the 42 accounting journals.

A Webmail survey was used to collect data about authors’ experiences with publishing in one of the 42 accounting journals. A total of 856 responses (40 per cent response rate) was received. Various statistical analyses were used to explore a range of editorial review process features, including the timeliness of editorial feedback, timeliness of publishing accepted manuscripts, quality of the feedback provided and performance of the editor.

Authors were found to be generally quite satisfied with the editorial review processes of the journals in which they published. There were, however, notable leaders and laggards observed among the 42 journal titles. The survey findings also revealed that many journals use the practice of basing their editorial decisions on the comments of a single reviewer. In fact, this practice is most prevalent among the journals that are commonly perceived as the field’s “top” journals. These and other editorial review results – for example, comparisons between journal-tiers, geographical locations of editorial review offices and journal specialties – are discussed.

This paper extends and moves well beyond Adler and Liyanarachchi (2011), by exploring such additional author perceptions of the editorial review process as the performance of journal editors, the use of multiple reviewers and reviewers’ reporting of the typical faults/weaknesses in the papers they read. Exposing to public scrutiny an academic discipline’s editorial review processes is quite common in some fields of research, most notably medicine. Doing so in the accounting discipline addresses a need that many of the respondents felt was highly necessary and long overdue. While authors will benefit from the paper’s insights, editors and publishers are expected to as well.

The aim of this paper is to explore how trustworthy knowledge claims in Wikipedia are constructed by focusing on the everyday practices of Wikipedia editors. The paper seeks to focus particularly on the role of references to external sources for the stabilisation of knowledge in Wikipedia.

The study is inspired by online ethnography. It includes 11 Wikipedia editors, together with the sociotechnical resources in Wikipedia. The material was collected through interviews, online observations, web documents and discussions, and e‐mail questions. The analysis was carried out from a perspective of science and technology studies (STS).

Wikipedia can be regarded as a laboratory for knowledge construction in which the already published is being recycled. The references to external sources anchor the participatory encyclopaedia in the ecology of established media and attribute trust to the knowledge published. The policy on Verifiability is analysed as an obligatory passage point to which all actors have to adjust. Active Wikipedia editors can be seen as being akin to janitors of knowledge, as they are those who, through their hands‐on activities, keep Wikipedia stable.

The study develops an innovative understanding of the knowledge construction culture in one of the most popular sources for information on the internet. By highlighting the ways in which trust is established in Wikipedia, a more reflexive use of the participatory encyclopaedia is made possible. This is of value for information literacy training.

Writing and publishing research is an integral part of any academic's job. It is important for an individual's academic progression and is vital for the development, updating and refinement of teaching materials. This paper aims to focus on the purpose and value of publishing.

Editors, reviewer and authors have different roles to play in the pre‐publishing life of a potential article and so the different perspectives of editors, reviewers and authors in relation to successful journal article publication are discussed.

The paper describes the process of preparing academic papers and a stage by stage approach to writing an article. This includes how to target a suitable journal, taking account of the editor, reviewers and potential readers of an article, how to write an academic article, with an appropriate structure and style, redrafting and sending a paper off for review and carrying out requested revisions.

The views expressed in this paper are based on the authors' combined experience of performing all three roles over a number of years. This experience has been enriched by participation in discussions at “meet the editors” sessions at a variety of academic conferences throughout the world, and from discussions of academic committees, in particular, the Academy of Marketing Research Committee during 2005.

This paper aims to analyze the opinions of newsletter editors in the Sierra Club in an effort to understand the roles an editor and newsletter content play in building relationships in an activist setting. There are two goals: to examine editorial decision making in an activist organization; and to examine the role of interpersonal interaction as part of an organizational‐public relationship (OPR).

In‐depth interviews with 14 Sierra Club newsletter editors examined issues related to newsletter content choice, issue frames, sources, and mission.

The findings illustrate normative practices for grassroots gatekeepers. Editors saw their role as facilitating relationship building and activism among members. This has theoretical implications for OPR theory by suggesting a new facilitative relationship type.

As all qualitative research, the findings of this study are not generalizable. This study is further limited because it focuses on a single organization and one communication channel.

Most editors suggested that content selection was based on the expertise of the editor or an editorial or executive board. This provides strategic communication opportunities for both the national and the grassroots organization, if the editorial decision making model is identified by strategists.

Mid‐level gatekeepers, such as newsletter editors, are an important public to study because of their potential impact on key publics. This paper provides both practical and theoretical implications. Practical implications include insights into how some activist gatekeepers make decisions and into information salience.

Editors of employee magazines work in a grey area between public relations and journalism. On the one hand, they need to accommodate the company management’s interest in a positive presentation; on the other, they must meet the employees’ need for objective and independent information. Although employee magazines reach millions of recipients every day, its editors have rarely been the focus of academic work. The purpose of this paper is to change this and scrutinise the way the editors view their professional role and the role conflicts to which they are subjected.

We conduct 15 qualitative semi-structured interviews with editors of employee magazines to analyse their professional role and possible conflicts in their work.

The editors’ self-concept varies significantly along two dimensions, which the authors use as the basis for distinguishing four types: the management ambassador, the employee representative, the mediator and the service provider.

The study sheds light on employee magazines, a medium between public relations and journalism that has not been analysed before. It helps to specify the role of these magazines and its editors’ between the expectations of the management and the employees.

Applications of information technology have been directly responsible for the increase in productivity of business, government and academic activities. Business and management historians have yet to contribute to better understanding such processes. This paper aims to address this shortcoming through the internal and organisational history of a system for speedy, online distribution of recent additions to the broad literatures on economics and related areas called NEP: New Economic Papers.

This is a first person account (partly autobiographical) which also includes interviews and the use of archived e‐mail correspondence.

The advent of the internet promised a revolutionary change by democratising the social institutions related to the creation and dissemination of academic knowledge. Instead, this story tells how participants slowly but steadily tended to replicate established institutions.

This paper provides a story of the NEP project and shows how one person's drive could generate a broader community of volunteers (constituted by a large number of academics and practitioners who provide critical support for its functioning). The paper provides details of the social and technological challenges for the construction of the technological platform as well as the evolution of its governance.

There is no historiography in business and management history on how to deal with changes in archived material resulting from the application of information and telecommunication technologies. Given the rate of change for events in the third industrial revolution, this paper shows it is possible and indeed relevant to document events in the recent past.

Wiki is a new form of information production and organization, which has become one of the most important knowledge resources. In recent years, with the increase of users in wikis, “free rider problem” has been serious. In order to motivate editors to contribute more to a wiki system, it is important to fully understand their contribution behavior. The purpose of this paper is to explore the law of dynamic contribution behavior of editors in wikis.

After developing a dynamic model of contribution behavior, the authors employed both the metrological and clustering methods to process the time series data. The experimental data were collected from Baidu Baike, a renowned Chinese wiki system similar to Wikipedia.

There are four categories of editors: “testers,” “dropouts,” “delayers” and “stickers.” Testers, who contribute the least content and stop contributing rapidly after editing a few articles. After editing a large amount of content, dropouts stop contributing completely. Delayers are the editors who do not stop contributing during the observation time, but they may stop contributing in the near future. Stickers, who keep contributing and edit the most content, are the core editors. In addition, there are significant time-of-day and holiday effects on the number of editors’ contributions.

By using the method of time series analysis, some new characteristics of editors and editor types were found. Compared with the former studies, this research also had a larger sample. Therefore, the results are more scientific and representative and can help managers to better optimize the wiki systems and formulate incentive strategies for editors.