Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: Research quality in accounting education

Accounting education research is often considered not to be of comparable quality to other accounting research, thereby providing secondary careers for those researching within the niche sub-discipline. We present several factors that have influenced this perception, with the most notable being the various journal quality guides where specialist accounting education journals typically do not rank well. We also explore possible explanations for why specialist accounting education journals do not rank highly. We discuss the ill-defined and contested concept of research quality and research impact, concluding that the determination of research quality differs according to which stakeholder group is con-ducting the assessment; academe, the accounting profession, governments or students.We also discuss the findings from the three papers in this special issue and offer suggestions for future research in this area.