Most Prolific Authors in the Accounting Literature Over the Past Half-Century: 1959-2008

The prolific authors identified in this study are truly remarkable: 626 prolific authors in five leading accounting journals and 620 prolific authors in twenty five core accounting journals examined. These authors demonstrate great durability in navigating the vagaries of referees and the demands of editors. They represent a small minority of thousands of authors during the half century 1959 to 2008. Besides satisfying a natural curiosity of who the prolific authors are, examination of extreme performance provides perspective on research productivity in accounting, as do the reported distributional statistics. The findings help in the formation of realistic expectations about scholarly work.