Contemporary Accounting Research

Senior Scholar One Round Review (SOAR)*

For the next year or so, the Editor (in-Chief), Steve Salterio, will be running a little experiment at Contemporary Accounting Research called the “Senior Scholar One Round Review” (SOAR). Basically, SOAR allows senior scholars (i.e. those with an established reputation for excellence and who know the difference between their best and not-so-good work) to OPT into a one round review format: “Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down”.  In other words, at the end of the first and only round of reviews, the paper is either accepted for publication or is rejected from the journal.  A simple “Yes/No” is given at the end of this round. The goal of the program is to solicit manuscripts from senior scholars that might have otherwise gone through a tortuous path before arriving at CAR.

A few ground rules:

• The research must be the senior scholar’s own work (albeit with co-authors), not a paper written by a junior faculty member who adds the senior scholar late in the process to help publish the paper. Hence, the senior scholars must handle all aspects of the submission themselves.
• The full history of the paper, including any prior journal submissions (expected to decline over time and be ONLY to peer journals of CAR), must be revealed in the cover letter to the CAR Editor. Reviews and editorial decision letters, if any, must be attached to the submission. Please select “Cover Letter to Editor” from the drop-down menu to attach these materials to your SOAR submission through the EM submission system.  Any non-disclosure will result in the immediate rejection of the paper when it is discovered, no matter where in the process the paper is at the time of discovery of the incomplete disclosure.
• It is the CAR Editor’s sole determination as to whether the paper gets accepted into the SOAR program, based on an assessment of whether the paper is submitted within the spirit of the program. If not accepted into the SOAR program, the paper defaults to being a regular CAR submission, with the authors’ permission.
• Review Process:  
• The senior scholar submitting the paper suggests two other senior scholars as reviewers (ones without conflict of interest). The CAR Editor will pick one of those two in addition to one of the senior members of the CAR Editorial Team.  Reviewers will not know who has chosen them, the Editor or the author.
• The mandate to the reviewers is simple.  “Yes” or “No” to accept for publication, with the accepted paper requiring only simple editorial revisions that the CAR Editor can supervise, which means revisions that most of the time a non-expert can handle and ensure are done adequately.  
• Both reviewers must agree to a “Yes” on the one and only round.
• The paper cannot move into the regular review process after it has been accepted into the SOAR stream, although an author can withdraw it from the stream.
• A paper rejected (or withdrawn by the author) in the SOAR stream cannot be re-submitted to the journal as a regular paper.

Please let your friends and colleagues know about this innovative program.

Steven Salterio
Editor (in-Chief), Contemporary Accounting Research

* SOAR is based on an idea Robert Knechel (then Editor-elect at Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory) discussed with me during the time he was considering an offer to become editor of that journal.  The idea is in the public domain as several highly rated economic and science journals use this option.