Submit-to-Accept Times in Accounting: Determinants and Comparisons to other Business Disciplines

We use hand-collected data to analyze submission-to-acceptance (STA) times in the top-tier accounting journals relative to other top-tier business journals from 1993 through 2021. We find that, vis-à-vis other business disciplines, STA times at top-tier accounting journals were shorter in the first half of our sample period and significantly longer thereafter. We also observe shorter STA times for articles with authors from more highly ranked institutions; this effect exists only in top-tier accounting journals and has increased over time. In additional analyses, we find that our primary inferences are unchanged when considering maturity of initial journal submissions, journal-level democratization, and review process improvements related to paper quality. Our results should be of interest to researchers, journal editors, reviewers, provosts, deans, and tenure and promotion committees.