Literature Positioning (jar-literature-positioning)
When to trigger
- The intro reads as gap-spotting ("no one has studied X")
- A referee says "this is incremental over [prior JAR/JAE paper]"
- You cannot name the specific accounting conversation you are joining
- You are unsure whether JAR or a sister accounting journal is the right home
Position against the accounting conversation, not a generic gap
JAR referees are accounting economists who know the capital-markets, disclosure, audit, tax, and standard-setting literatures intimately. A strong front end names the specific conversation — e.g., the value-relevance/earnings-informativeness stream descending from Ball-Brown, the voluntary-disclosure literature, the cost-of-capital/information-environment literature, the audit-quality literature, the recognition-vs.-disclosure debate — and states precisely what is open in it. "Gap because unstudied" is not enough; the open question must matter economically.
State the marginal contribution sharply
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Relative to the closest papers. Identify the two or three nearest prior studies (often in JAR/JAE/TAR/RAST) and say what they got right and what they left unresolved — a setting they couldn't identify, a channel they couldn't separate, a sample they couldn't reach.
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What is new here. A novel setting/shock, a cleaner identification, a new construct or measure (e.g., a text-based disclosure measure), or an adjudication between competing theories.
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Why it advances accounting knowledge. Tie the increment to how we understand the production, disclosure, audit, or use of accounting information — not to a methodological novelty alone.
Get the venue right
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JAR: empirical-archival capital-markets identity (Ball-Brown lineage), strong analytical/experimental streams; requires posted data and code. Best for clean-identification, economically consequential accounting questions.
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JAE: positive, contracting/disclosure economics; encourages code sharing.
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TAR (AAA): broad scope across all accounting subfields and methods.
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RAST / CAR: respected empirical homes with their own scopes.
If your contribution is purely methodological with no accounting question, reconsider the venue.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
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Gap-spotting: "X has not been examined" with no economic stake.
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Strawman literature: dismissing close prior work instead of building on it.
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Citation by laundry list: many references, no articulated conversation.
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Wrong-venue framing: positioning a finance or pure-methods paper as accounting.
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Hiding the closest paper: failing to cite the obvious nearest study (referees will know it).
Before/after: the positioning paragraph
JAR referees read the opening for the conversation and the marginal move, in that order. Rewrite gap-spotting into contribution:
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Before (gap-spotting): "Prior research has examined disclosure and the cost of capital. However, no study has examined the effect of [narrow disclosure item] on [narrow outcome] in [narrow setting]. We fill this gap."
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After (conversation + increment): "The information-environment literature links greater disclosure to a lower cost of capital (Ball-Brown lineage; voluntary-disclosure stream). Whether this reflects a genuine reduction in adverse selection or merely correlated firm quality has remained unresolved because prior settings could not separate the two. We exploit [staggered mandate] to isolate the disclosure channel, showing the cost-of-capital response survives firm-quality controls."
The after version names the stream, states what is economically open, and pins the increment to identification — not to novelty.
Referee expectation checklist (accounting-economist reader)
Output format
【Conversation joined】literature stream + what is open
【Closest prior work】2-3 papers; what each left unresolved
【Marginal contribution】new setting / identification / measure / adjudication
【Why it advances accounting knowledge】[...]
【Venue fit】JAR vs. JAE/TAR/RAST/CAR
【Next step】jar-methods or jar-contribution-framing
Resources
