The aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on publish and perish, which is a phenomenon that, for a long time, has been a theme of discussion. This phenomenon has affected many academic disciplines (Miller et al. 2011), including accounting. It is described to be the result of the increased competition that has developed based on the desire to identify the productiveness of universities, departments and faculties. It has created the pressure on scholars to produce quality outputs in the form of publications in high-ranked international refereed journals.
This study adopts the idea that high-ranked academic journals are setting the context for what is valid and not valid in accounting scholarship, i.e. high-ranked international refereed journals becomes the prevalent discourse for how researchers supposed to write and think about research in accounting scholarship.
The purpose of this paper is through a discourse analysis study if the same phenomena that are apparent in the prevalent discourse of accounting set by top journals also can be seen in the less prestigious and lower-ranked journals of accounting.