well I have made it to Glasgow after a short trip to Scotland’s capital! It is a little known fact that this Canadian is one half Scottish on me mom’s side so I feel right at home here!
It will be interesting to get a sense of where European accounting research is 20 years after my first visit when the meeting was held in Birmingham ! One thing for certain is that much has changed!
However One thing that bothers me is that without discusants on the vast majority of papers, young scholars get very little feedback from presenting here! Why? The review system is designed to separate the wheat from the chafe by having a relatively centralized scientific committee where each member I am told evaluates 30 to 50 papers!
That by necessity results in little feedback besides the four fold classification of paper with discussant, presentation with question time, presentation in a set of five papers or research forum! While this system has the advantage of maximizing participation it minimizes feedback received! For at most conferences the only hope for feedback for the submitter comes from when the discussant is a more senior faculty member who works in the area or a better trained junior faculty member or advanced PHD student!
Perhaps the EAA should have special sessions where European junior faculty and doctoral students get feedback from senior faculty! In any case I urge the EAA to take some concert steps to find a way to turn the Conference into a better learning and development opportunity for young European scholars – just a thought!
Musings on Accounting Research by Steve 
Dear Steve, many many issues about the EAA scientific programme that you mention in your post are summarized and explained in my paper “How do papers get accepted to EAA annual congresses?” (available via: http://tinyurl.com/ppdx8ql ). It reflects the choices we have made in the EAA thus far. We regularly update what we do and change things to reflect the developments in our community. We also monitor closely what we do and disclose relevant information every year. In an ideal world each paper presented at the conference would get two full reviews by academically-senior staff and also a discussant at the conference. Sure. We all know that. The reality? The exact number of reviews per paper for 2015 is 17.5 – I think this number describes the reality we face pretty well. We can also debate whether having 118 reviewers is “relativley centralized” or not – it certainly isn’t from my perspective… (I do not mention any of the several PhD-related activities that the EAA has been pursuing actively for years and the new ones introduced recently as this falls outside of my domain.)
Kind regards,
Aljosa Valentincic, Chair of the Standing Scientific Committee, European Accounting Association
Thanks for the reply! I know the EAA has very transparent procedures and I appreciate that. However I think the quantity dimension has come to dominate the discourse and the developmental dimension has been the trade off.
As someone who helped motivate the establishment of the EAA PhD forum and who volunteered to help with this one I am fully aware of the support for doctoral students! The next question is how do we support them better in doing good research later!
17.x papers a person is relatively centralized versus the North American model of two to three per person! At the CAAA use use 118 reviewers for 170 paper! Quite a different approach!
Me, I do not want to interfere with what the EAA does! However, I know this, participants get little to no feedback from this process!