Accounting & Finance

Published on behalf of The Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand

Edited by:
Robert Faff

Print ISSN: 0810-5391
Online ISSN: 1467-629X
Frequency: Quarterly
Current Volume: 49 / 2009

TopAuthor Guidelines

Editorial Policy

Accounting & Finance enjoys an excellent reputation as an academic journal that publishes significant contributions to the accounting, finance, business information systems and related disciplines. The Journal seeks to publish work that develops, tests, or advances accounting, finance and information systems theory, research and practice. All types of research methods are acceptable. The primary criterion for publication in Accounting & Finance is the significance of the contribution an article makes to the literature.

Manuscripts are considered for publication on the understanding that their contents have not been published or are not under consideration elsewhere. Those submitting papers to the Journal must accept responsibility for preparing papers at a level suitable for review. This preparation should include subjecting the paper to critique by colleagues and others by "workshopping" and revising the paper prior to submission. Reviewers and associate editors are responsible for providing critically constructive and prompt reviews. Manuscripts are judged on the significance of the contribution to the literature, the quality of analysis and the clarity of presentation as judged by the editor on the advice of referees and associate editors.

Submission of Manuscripts

1. Electronic submission to the Editor, Professor Robert Faff, is strongly encouraged via email.* Submission of a manuscript implies that it contains original unpub-lished work and is not submitted for publication elsewhere.

• Electronic submissions can be in Word or PDF format.

• If the manuscript is submitted as a PDF file, to ensure anonymity, two files must be furnished: (a) a file containing the 'title page' (as per point 4 below) and (b) a file that contains the main body of the manuscript which suppresses author identity, that is, it simply begins with a page that shows the paper title and an abstract.

• Submission email address is: robert.faff@buseco.monash.edu.au

• For papers where at least one co-author is a current paid-up member of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ), there is no submission fee. In these cases the cover letter to the editor should clearly state the AFAANZ membership number.

• For papers where none of the co-authors are current paid-up members of AFAANZ the submission fee is A$132 (this amount includes 10% GST), and if submitting from overseas the fee is A$120 (note that this fee entitles the submitting author to a one-year membership of AFAANZ). Please click on this link http://membership.afaanz.org/join.htm to join. Please pay by MasterCard or Visa. Payment can also be made via cheque to the 'Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand', but you will have to register online and click the payment option "Pay by Cheque" and complete your registration.

• The submission cheque (overseas contributors to send bank draft in Australian currency) together with a photocopy of the submission letter sent to the Editor, should be posted directly to: Cheryl Umoh, Executive Director, AFAANZ, Level 1, 156 Bouverie Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia.

2. Manuscripts should be double-spaced, with wide margins, and printed on one side of the paper only. All pages should be numbered consecutively.

3. Titles and subtitles should be short. An example of these follows.

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical background and hypothesis
3. Empirical tests
3.1 Sample selection
3.2 Measurement of variables
4. Results
4.1 Univariate tests
4.2 Multivariate tests
5. Summary and conclusions

4. The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information: (i) the title; (ii) the name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s); (iii) a footnote giving the name, address, telephone number, fax number, and email address of the corresponding author; (iv) at least one classification code according to the Classification System for Journal Articles as used by the Journal of Economic Literature; (v) up to five key words; (vi) a footnote of acknowledgments which should not be included in the consecutive numbering of footnotes.

The second page should only include the title of the paper and the abstract (of not more than 100 words). No identification of authors should appear on this page.

5. Footnotes should be kept to a minimum and numbered consecutively throughout the text with superscript Arabic numerals. They should not include displayed formulae or tables.

6. Displayed formulae should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript as (1), (2) etc. against the right-hand margin of the page. Letters used as symbols should be set in italics unless they represent vector quantities in which case they should be bold. Do not use bold or italics for numerals and abbreviations for math functions (such as ln). Use italics for names of statistical tests (such as t-statistics, t-test, t = 4.68, F-test).

7. References to publications should be as follows: "Jones (1992) suggests that . . ." or "This problem was noted earlier (see Smith, 1990; Black and Cook, 1990; Brown et al., 1983)" or "There are 128 companies using this accounting method (Green, 1995, p. 38)".

8. The list of references should appear at the end of the main text (after appendices, but before tables and figures). It should be double-spaced and listed in alphabetical order. References should appear as follows:

For periodicals
Eddey, P. H., K. W. Lee, and S. L. Taylor, 1996, What motivates going private? An analysis of Australian firms, Accounting and Finance 36, 31-50.
For monographs
Cox, J. C. and M. Rubenstein, 1985, Options markets (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
For contributions to collective works
Nobes, C. W., 1988, The causes of financial reporting differences, in: C. W. Nobes and R. H. Parker, eds, Issues in multinational accounting (Ethan Allan, Oxford) 29-42.
For working papers
Chua, W. F., B. K. Sidhu, and G. P. Whittred, 1995, The impact of industry regulation, taxation and corporate strategy on accounting method choice - Cash vs accrual accounting for tobacco licence fees, Working paper (University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW).
For conference papers
Guilding, C., 1996, A contingency study of the adoption of competitor-focused accounting, Paper presented at the AAANZ Annual Conference, Christchurch.

For electronic source
Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, AFAANZ Home page [Internet document] (Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne) [created 2 May 2003; cited 13 April 2004], available from http://www.afaanz.org/
9. Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals and printed on separate sheets.

10. Data should be supplied so that figures can be reproduced using DeltaGraph. If supplied electronically, graphics must be supplied as high resolution (at least 300 d.p.i.) files. Files can be supplied as .eps, .tif or any Microsoft Office application. Digital images supplied only as low-resolution print-outs and/or files cannot be used.
11. Papers accepted for publication become copyright of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, and authors will be asked to sign an Exclusive Licence Form. In signing the form it is assumed that authors have obtained permission to use any copyrighted or previously published material. All authors must read and agree to the conditions outlined in the form, and must sign the form or agree that the corresponding author can sign on their behalf. Articles cannot be published until a signed form has been received. Authors can download the form from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/acfi_elf.pdf

12. Authors who require the return of any submitted material that is accepted for publication should inform the Editorial Office after acceptance. If no indication is given that author material should be returned, Blackwell Publishing will dispose of all hardcopy and electronic material two months after publication.

13. The source of financial grants and other funding must be acknowledged, including a frank declaration of the authors' industrial links and affiliations. The contribution of colleagues or institutions should also be acknowledged.

Any manuscript which does not conform to the above instructions may be returned for the necessary revision before publication.

Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. Proofs should be corrected carefully; the responsibility for detecting errors lies with the author.

Early View
Accounting and Finance is covered by Blackwell Publishing's Early View service. Early View articles are complete full-text articles published online in advance of their publication in a printed issue. Articles are therefore available as soon as they are ready, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled print issue. Early View articles are complete and final. They have been fully reviewed, reised and edited for publication, and the authors' final corrections have been incorporated. Because they are in final form, no changes can be made after online publication. The nature of Early View articles means that they do not yet have volume, issue or page numbers, so Early View articles cannot be cited in the traditional way. They are therefore given a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), whic allows the article to be cited and tracked before it is allocated to an issue. After print publication, the DOI remains valid and can continue to be used to cite and access the article. More information about DOIs can be found at http://www.doi.org/faq.html.

Editorial Pre-submission English language editing
Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. A list of independent suppliers of editing services can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/english_language.asp. All services are paid for and arranged by the author, and use of one of these services does not guarantee acceptance or preference for publication.