The following e-mail exchange (March 20, 2014) between two co-editors of Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) relates to the preliminary evaluation of a new submission, in order to decide if it should be desk rejected or sent to review. Editor 1: We received a new submission and I would like to get your views on it. [ . . . ] Overall, this is qualitative research informed by a functionalist perspective, using data from a marginalized country (this is of interest but it does not make the paper critical per se). If the authors want to publish their work without changing its overall orientation, then [Journal X] is probably a better fit than CPA. However, there may be ways to transform the paper and make it more “critical”.[ . . . ] This is probably feasible but it would require lots of work. Ultimately, I wonder if I should just issue a “reject and resubmit” letter, saying to the authors that they should target a journal such as [Journal X]
but that if they want to give it a try with CPA, then we can send their paper to review but first they should modify the paper along the points I mentioned above (and make a new submission). Does it make sense to you? Am I overly conservative? Editor 2: I think a reject and resubmit would be fair. Honestly there are enough journals with stories about how to make capitalism more efficient. But since the authors look pretty new I would give a strong steer about what it means to be critical. I hate rejecting papers from new academics. I really want to help them but part of that is learning to send things to the right journals. While some of the words used by the two editors may seem to belong “naturally” to a critical research epistemology (e.g., “marginalized” and “capitalism”), the above discussion points out the nature of critical research is difficult to grasp. The discussion illustrates challenges in making sense of the boundaries of critical accounting research, as Editor 1 wonders whether her/his tentative inclination to favor a desk rejection is overly conservative. My experience as one of the journal’s coeditors-in-chief indicates that editorial decisions are not made through a systematic and fixed protocol or checklist highlighting the different features that critical research should have. Instead, editorial decisions are taken by recognizing that a degree of epistemological fuzziness characterizes the boundaries of critical research. In particular, the editors’ judgment is especially mobilized when dealing with papers at the periphery of the field. In the specific case illustrated above, it is noteworthy seeing the two editors agreeing on the critical accounting research project not being receptive to studies aimed at helping capitalism work better. The more general point is that the critical research project is an “alternative” project (Parker & Thomas, 2011); it seeks to encourage forms of thinking and intervening that take positions, in some ways, against the hegemony of established institutions.