Co‐authorship Network Analysis in the Accounting Discipline

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore co‐authorship structures in the accounting discipline through social network analysis. For this purpose, we hand‐collected the authorship data of 10 863 papers published in 22 accounting journals listed on the Web of Science for the period 2000–2016. The findings indicate that the proportion of multi‐author papers has increased over time while the trend away from sole authorship has continued. The network indicators and visualisations reflect that accounting research manifests a small‐world property. Despite the large network size, a high number of ties among nodes, the size of giant components and a high clustering coefficient all support this inference. We hope that emphasis on collaboration metrics motivates and encourages researchers to engage with other scholars both locally and abroad. Furthermore, the development of research networks in the analysis period indicates that the trend is moving towards more collaboration; thus, being part of a team or team‐making is key to integration with other scholars.

Exploring the conceptual structure of the auditing discipline through co‐word analysis: An international perspective

“…between 0 and 1 denotes the proportion of existing links to all possible links in the network (Andrikopoulos & Kostaris, 2017; Gallardo-Gallardo, Arroyo Moliner, & Gallo, 2017; Khan & Wood, 2015; Racherla & Hu, 2010). Third, across the periods, the consistent increase in connectedness and decrease in fragmentation in the network showed that the co-word network became increasingly tight and cohesive(Kılıç et al, 2019;Varga, 2011), because the connectedness index measures the extent to which individual actors are connected in the network, whereas the fragmentation index indicates how the network fragments into clusters(Shimada & Sueur, 2014). The apparently low-density value was not particularly surprising and it was attributable to the large size of the network in our case(Gallardo-Gallardo et al, 2017).…”

“…The consistent decline in fragmentation and increase in connectedness within the co-word network showed that the auditing discipline is becoming increasingly tight and cohesive (Kılıç et al, 2019;Varga, 2011 Advances in information technology, the rise of the real-time economy, and massive fraud scandals played a major role in the emergence of continuous auditing practices (Eulerich & Kalinichenko, 2018). Researchers have generally tended to study continuous auditing using XML-based accounting systems (Murthy & Groomer, 2004), in an internal auditing context (Gonzalez, Sharma, & Galletta, 2012), to determine whether it enhances financial reporting quality (Lee, Kang, Oh, & Pyo, 2014), to assess how to minimize the cost of continuous audit practices arising from the maintenance of a large dataset (Pathak, Chaouch, & Sriram, 2005;Pathak, Nkurunziza, & Ahmed, 2007), and to evaluate the incremental value of continuous auditing practice (Farkas & Murthy, 2014 ; the drivers of, and obstacles to, big data evolution in audits (Alles, 2015); the consequences of big data in accounting and auditing (Krahel & Titera, 2015); the impact of big data on audit evidence; and audit judgments and financial statement audits (Brown-Liburd, Issa, & Lombardi, 2015;Cao, Chychyla, & Stewart, 2015;Yoon, Hoogduin, & Zhang, 2015).…”

“…The increasing value of the average degree across the periods indicated the propensity for higher connectedness of the keywords in the auditing discipline (i.e., 7.17 in 2000-2005, 7.26 in 2006-2010, and 8.19 in 2011-2016 (Gallardo-Gallardo et al, 2017). Third, across the periods, the consistent increase in connectedness and decrease in fragmentation in the network showed that the co-word network became increasingly tight and cohesive (Kılıç et al, 2019;Varga, 2011), because the connectedness index measures the extent to which individual actors are connected in the network, whereas the fragmentation index indicates how the network fragments into clusters (Shimada & Sueur, 2014). 8…”

“…In this section, we provide the rankings of individual keywords in terms of betweenness centrality and degree centrality, since these two metrics are commonly used network indicators to evaluate the centrality of keywords within the network (Kılıç et al, 2019). While betweenness centrality measures the capacity of a keyword to connect other keywords in the transmission of data within the network, like a broker (Sedighi, 2016), degree centrality demonstrates the number of keywords that a keyword is engaged with (Acedo, Barroso, Casanueva, & Galán, 2006;Khan & Wood, 2015).…”

“…First, bibliometric research in accounting has mostly examined publishing patterns based on authorship, journals, institutions, countries, and regions across time through content and/or citation analysis (Anderson, 2002;Brown & Gardner, 1985;Carmona, Gutierrez, & Camara, 1999;Chung, Pak, & Cox, 1992;Heck & Bremser, 1986). 3 In particular, a significant number of studies have paid attention to analyses of co-authorship 4 (Andrikopoulos & Kostaris, 2017;Chan, Chen, & Cheng, 2009;Kılıç, Uyar, & Koseoglu, 2019) and co-citation 5 networks (Bisman, 2011;Bricker, 1989;Linnenluecke et al, 2017;Meyer et al, 2007;Uysal, 2010). Although bibliometric techniques (i.e., coauthorship, co-citation) have provided useful insights into the literature, they could not demonstrate the conceptual structure of a scientific discipline (Ding et al, 2001).…”