Point and Click Data: An Assessment of Editorial Perceptions and Recommendations for the Peer-Review Process in the New Data Frontier

In the new research frontier of data availability, this study develops guidelines to aid accounting academicians as they seek to evidence data integrity proactively in the peer-review process. To that end, we explore data integrity issues associated with two emerging data streams that are gaining prominence in the accounting literature: online labor markets and social media sources. We provide rich detail surrounding academic thought about these data platforms through interview data collected from a sample of former senior journal editors and survey data collected from a sample of peer reviewers. We then propound a set of best practice considerations that are designed to mitigate the perceived risks identified by our assessment.