A Study of the Structure and Framework of Scientific Articles in International Accounting Journals

  The purpose of this paper is to examine the framework of scientific articles in international accounting journals to access the commonly used method of accounting research. In this regard, a conceptual framework for components of the structure of scientific articles was presented, using the library method.
Research Hypotheses
Considering the theoretical foundations of the desirable structure of a research paper and the literature of research, the main question is whether the articles published in accounting journals follow the desirable structure of a scientific research paper? Thus two hypotheses are presented:Hypothesis 1: The structure of scientific accounting research papers is consistent with the desirable structure of a scientific research paper.
Hypothesis 2: There is a significant difference between the structures of scientific articles in international accounting journals with different degrees. The conceptual framework for components of the structure of scientific articles was presented, using the library method. In the next step, the structure of 643 articles between 2009 and 2017 and among 78 international accounting journals with varying degrees, were performed, using content analysis and the structure of accounting articles were adapted with conceptual framework according to statistical tests. The results showed that, generally, the structure of accounting articles is in accordance with the structure prescribed in the research method for a scientific article, and only two parts of the theoretical framework and suggestions are not consistent with desirable characteristics of a scientific article. In addition, the results showed that 37 and 36 percent of the articles don't have the section of “suggestions and constraints”. In contrast, 75, 94 and 93 percent of the articles have the desired characteristics of title, resources and introduction. Finally, the ranking of the journals was determined using quartile and the results were compared. After determining journal's rank, using quartile, the results were compared. The results of this section showed that the main structure of articles in different journals is not different, but there is a difference between the characteristics of the abstract, keywords, introduction, theoretical framework and findings.