Three Rs and Four Ws.

The Editorial Policy printed in this issue is largely a product of the AAA Publications Committee. My influence came toward the end of the deliberations. Although the spirit of the current Editorial Policy is similar to previous editorial policies published in this journal, that spirit is expressed

differently in the current policy. Intended to serve as a bridge journal between the academic and practicing wings of our profession, Accounting Horizons must publish articles accessible to a wide and diverse audience. Such articles are likely to represent the scholarship of integration and the scholarship of application, and the occasional timely piece of discovery research that is communicated effectively without the heavy methodological content and extensive tabular presentations often found in discovery research papers.

The "Three Rs"

To describe the essential characteristics of Horizons papers, I focus on Readability, Relevance, and Rigor (listed alphabetically). Readability refers to the effectiveness with which the paper's messages are communicated and the accessibility of those messages to a diverse group of readers. Technical terms, methodologies, and tabular material must be explained clearly. Papers must not be inordinately long; for submitted manuscripts 20 pages is a good target maximum length. Relevance means that papers must address topics that appeal to a broad audience--researchers, educators, practitioners, regulators and students--and often implies linkages to real-world developments. Rigor means thoughtful, well-articulated arguments and logic, and appropriately designed examples, experiments, and tests. It does not mean that only papers with rigorous statistical or mathematical work are acceptable.

Next, the "Four Ws" help motivate the work authors describe in their manuscripts.

The "Four Ws"

The "Four Ws" came from an Editorial Board member trying to get an author team to properly motivate their work. In short, both in the abstract and in the first one or two pages of the paper, authors must briefly explain:

* what they are doing,

* why they are doing it,

* what they found, and

* why the findings are important.

The rest of the paper develops these four points and must be consistent with them. If your manuscript does not address the Four Ws, then the likelihood of acceptance by Horizons is remote.

My Role as Editor

My objective is to identify good manuscripts and help authors get them into publishable form. Six Associate Editors also dedicated to doing this manage the review of most papers. I read all submitted papers and frequently request revisions before a more comprehensive review is considered. Papers that seem too long--30 pages or more in total--or too complicated with technical jargon, mathematical notation, hard-to-interpret tables, even excessive numbers of acronyms, are all candidates for pre-review revisions. Papers with these characteristics are difficult to review, especially by reviewers from practice, are not likely to be published without major changes, and are not likely to be widely read if published without those changes. Thus, I hope to address significant concerns prior to assigning papers to Associate Editors. The Associate Editors also read the papers carefully and, for papers that have promise, obtain the traditional comprehensive anonymous peer reviews that are the hallmark of academic journal publishing.

At the time papers are accepted for publication I work with the authors in a thorough final editing to insure that the published paper communicates its message as effectively as possible.

The Role of Commentaries

Commentaries have long been an important and useful feature of Accounting Horizons. They represent vehicles for disseminating views of high-profile individuals in our profession, overviews of research and practice areas, and selected reports of the AAA's Financial Accounting Standards Committee. Some commentaries are commissioned by the Editor, some are unsolicited submissions, and others evolve from regular submissions into commentaries. All commentary submissions are reviewed and edited.

We Need Your Research Papers

Accounting Horizons typically does not have a large inventory of unpublished papers; my first few months as editor confirms that. Relatively few papers satisfy all three standards of readability, relevance, and rigor needed for successful publications. Horizons has a very large audience. If the Editorial Group can deliver on its commitment to publish papers embodying the "Three Rs," then those papers will be widely disseminated and widely read. Give us something promising to work with, and we will try hard to help you get it into publishable form!