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ABSTRACT
This study uses three databases to identify and discuss trends within The Journal of the American Taxation Association (DATA) for the 1979 through 2000 time period. This research reports on institutional involvement of the authors publishing in JATA and examines the extent of citations of DATA articles within the journal itself and in other academic, accounting journals. Methodologies utilized are content, participation, and citation analyses.
A review of the data suggests that JATA went through a major shift in emphasis during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This shift brought a narrowing of focus on tax topics and research methodologies consistent with the Scholes and Wolfson paradigm of tax research. In addition, participation in JATA shifted more toward Assistant Professors, although this gap has begun to close in recent years.
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INTRODUCTION
The Journal of the American Taxation Association (DATA or Journal) encompasses over two decades of development in tax research. JATA has provided researchers an outlet for disseminating new research findings and techniques, as well as a forum to build on and refine existing knowledge. Over this period, many lines of tax research expanded, while others emerged and new researchers entered the accounting discipline. This development has helped elevate the tax research area within accounting from one where finding a research outlet was difficult (Crumbley 1987) to a field in which scholars participate in the tax arena with those from law and economics (Shackelford and Shevlin 2001).
One means of following lines of thought within an academic field is to examine the content of the primary research outlet (Meyer and Rigsby 2001). This exercise has been performed in a variety of general and subdiscipline accounting contexts (Meyer and Rigsby 2001; Scapens and Bromwich 2001; Daigle and Arnold 2000; Watts 1998; Urbancic 1994; Carnaghan et al. 1994; Mitchusson and Steinbart 1993; Smith and Krogstad 1991; Brown et al. 1987; Heck and Bremser 1986; Dyckman and Zeff 1984). In the field of tax research, there have been discussions of general trends (Shevlin 1999) and movements within specific research paradigms (Shackelford and Shevlin 2001; Roberts 1998).
This paper seeks to identify content, participation, and citation trends in JATA. This is accomplished using three databases developed by the authors that...