Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change: Scopus, Scope, Metrics & Submission Guide

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing; ISSN 1832-5912; eISSN 1839-5473.
• Core focus: accounting practices in relation to organizational change across business, public and nonprofit settings.
• Scopus source record supplied: 19900191757; Emerald reports 2025 CiteScore 7.1.
• Emerald reports 2025 Impact Factor 3.0 and five-year Impact Factor 2.9.
• Publisher-reported acceptance rate: 20.9% for submissions between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.
• Peer review: editorial screening followed by at least two independent referees using double-anonymous review when the paper proceeds.
• Standard article length: 6,000–10,000 words; structured abstract capped at 250 words; up to 12 keywords.
• Publishing model: hybrid, with optional gold OA after acceptance and a green self-archiving route.

Methodology and Source Approach

This profile was prepared from the supplied Scopus source identifiers and the current Emerald journal page, including its aims and scope, author guidelines, editorial team, indexing and metrics, review process, open-access guidance and ethics policies. Where the official page does not provide a current value—such as SJR, SNIP or a quartile—this guide does not invent one.

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change Aims and Scope

JAOC positions accounting as part of wider organizational change rather than as an isolated technical function. Its official scope emphasizes accounting practices in organizations undergoing social, technological, managerial and institutional change, and it invites interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Emerald identifies several evaluation themes: interdisciplinarity; co-creation with those affected by research; mission-driven research; community engagement; contribution to sustainable-development goals; synthesis of research, theory and practice; and responsiveness to industry. This makes the journal especially relevant when accounting is being studied as a mechanism, practice or language through which organizations adapt, govern, measure performance or become accountable.

Representative subject areas

• Accounting and management control in digitalized organizations
• Social and environmental accounting and reporting
• Accountability and performance across sectors
• Data analytics and accounting mechanisms in Industry 4.0
• Triple-bottom-line reporting and social accountability
• Culture, performance measurement and performance management
• Accounting change in transitional and developing economies
• Auditing, value-for-money and performance audits
• Sustainability-linked organizational change

Based on that scope, a manuscript that is purely technical accounting work with no meaningful organizational-change contribution may be less well aligned. Conversely, a general organizational-change paper with little accounting relevance may also struggle to establish fit.

Understanding Its Scopus Coverage and Journal Metrics

The supplied source row identifies JAOC with Scopus Source ID 19900191757. On Emerald’s current indexing-and-metrics panel, the journal has a 2025 CiteScore of 7.1 and a 2026 CiteScore Tracker of 6.8 at the time this guide was prepared. Because the tracker changes monthly, it should not be treated as a final annual score.

Emerald also reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 3.0 and a 2025 five-year Impact Factor of 2.9. The official page lists abstracting or indexing services including the British Library, EBSCO, ProQuest and ReadCube Discover, and it displays several discipline-specific ranking systems. Those systems measure different things and should not be collapsed into a single quality label.

A quartile, SJR or SNIP is not displayed on the Emerald page consulted for this article. Authors with institutional requirements tied to those measures should verify the current values directly in the relevant live database.

What Does the Journal Publish?

The official scope explicitly welcomes empirical and review papers, case studies and replications of previously published studies. During submission, Emerald lists paper-type options including Research Paper, Book Review and Doctoral Abstract, with categories covering research papers, viewpoints, technical papers, conceptual papers, case studies, literature reviews and general reviews.

For fit, article labels matter less than whether the manuscript makes a credible contribution to the journal’s accounting-and-change conversation. A qualitative case study of management-control transformation, an empirical analysis of sustainability accounting, an interdisciplinary review of digital accounting change, or a replication testing an established accounting-change relationship could all be plausible directions if executed rigorously.

Is This Journal a Good Match for Your Research?

A strong fit begins with the research question, not the metric. Before formatting the manuscript, compare the study with the journal’s scope and several recent JAOC articles. Ask whether accounting is central to the argument, whether organizational change is analytically meaningful, and whether the intended contribution will matter to the journal’s interdisciplinary readership.

Journal-fit checklist

• Does the research question sit clearly inside JAOC’s stated aims and scope?
• Is accounting, management control, auditing, reporting or accountability central rather than incidental?
• Does the manuscript explain the organizational-change contribution?
• Does JAOC publish the chosen paper type and comparable methodological approaches?
• Can the contribution be explained to both accounting and organizational audiences?
• Have you reviewed recent articles instead of relying only on the scope statement?
• Does the journal meet your university, funder or doctoral-program indexing requirements?
• Are you comfortable with the hybrid publishing model and any optional OA cost?

Preparing a Manuscript for JAOC

Emerald’s current author instructions are detailed and should be followed closely. Standard articles should be 6,000–10,000 words, including the structured abstract, references and text in tables, figures and appendices; authors are instructed to allow 250 words for each figure or table.

Structured abstract and keywords

Every submission requires a structured abstract. The mandatory subheadings are Purpose, Design/methodology/approach, Findings and Originality. Research limitations/implications, practical implications and social implications are optional when applicable. The full abstract is capped at 250 words, including keywords and article classification, and the submission may include up to 12 keywords.

Files, tables, figures and references

Article files should be supplied in Microsoft Word format; a PDF can accompany the Word file but cannot be the only manuscript file. LaTeX is permitted when accompanied by a PDF. Figures should be high-quality and supplied in accepted electronic formats. Tables are submitted separately and their placement marked in the manuscript. References must use a recognized Harvard style, with DOI details where available.

How to Submit and What Happens After Submission

The corresponding author must submit through the journal’s ScholarOne editorial system accessed from Emerald. Emerald states that manuscripts should not be submitted by email or through a third-party agent, company or proxy. Authors need their own journal-specific ScholarOne account, and Emerald asks authors to add an ORCID during submission.

1. Confirm scope and article-type fit.
2. Prepare an anonymized manuscript and separate author information where required.
3. Check word count, structured abstract, keywords, tables, figures, references and ethics declarations.
4. Submit directly through ScholarOne as the corresponding author.
5. Pass editorial-office screening for policy, scope and manuscript quality.
6. If suitable, enter double-anonymous review with at least two independent referees.
7. Respond to revision requests point by point where applicable.
8. After acceptance, complete licensing, proofing and production steps.

Emerald reports a 48-day time to first decision for its stated 2024–2025 reporting window and separately states a general goal of informing authors of a first decision within 60 days. These are publisher-reported statistics, not guaranteed timelines for any individual submission.

What Editors and Reviewers Are Likely to Look For

JAOC’s official page says the editorial office can decline or return a manuscript if it does not meet submission policies, aims and scope, or if language/manuscript quality is too low. Beyond those explicit checks, standard scholarly review typically considers the clarity of the research problem, adequacy of the method, quality of evidence, logic of interpretation, originality of contribution and ethical compliance.

Common readiness risks therefore include an accounting connection that is too weak, an unclear organizational-change contribution, insufficient engagement with relevant literature, unsupported conclusions, inadequate methodological transparency, inconsistent references, identifying information in an anonymous manuscript, or missing ethics and funding declarations. These are practical publication-readiness considerations rather than official rejection statistics.

Open Access, APCs and Publication Costs

JAOC is a hybrid journal. Emerald allows authors to choose gold open access after acceptance; an article processing charge is then payable and the article is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence. Emerald also provides a green open-access/self-archiving route in which the author accepted manuscript can be made openly available.

The journal’s page does not provide a static APC amount in the author-guideline text; instead, it directs authors to Emerald’s current APC price list or the editorial system. Because charges and waiver arrangements can change, verify the current fee before making funding commitments. Emerald also states that authors who do not choose gold OA should not be asked to pay publication, processing or review fees.

Publication Ethics and Emerald’s Generative-AI Policy

Emerald states that its journals follow COPE guidance and requires original work, disclosure of relevant prior publication, no simultaneous submission elsewhere, declaration of conflicts of interest, respect for copyright and permissions, and appropriate ethics approval and informed consent for research involving human participants where required.

Its current AI policy is especially important. Large language models cannot be credited as authors. Emerald says authors remain accountable for accuracy and integrity, and AI use must be responsible and transparent. The policy permits generative-AI copy-editing of an author’s own original existing work for structure, clarity, language and grammar, but does not permit generative-AI copywriting that creates or drafts new submission material. Authors should read the live Emerald publishing-ethics policy before using AI-assisted workflows because policy details may change.

Publication-Readiness Checklist Before You Click Submit

Is JAOC Suitable for PhD and Early-Career Researchers?

It can be, provided the manuscript fits the scope and meets the required standard. Scopus indexing or a citation metric does not automatically make a journal appropriate for every doctoral programme. A PhD researcher should check supervisor guidance, university rules, indexing requirements, journal fit and any funding conditions for open access.

For an early-career author, the most useful question is whether the paper genuinely participates in the conversation JAOC is building. A well-aligned, methodologically sound manuscript with a clear accounting-and-organizational-change contribution is more defensible than choosing the journal primarily because of its metrics.

How Researchers Should Evaluate the Journal

Rather than asking whether JAOC is simply a “good journal,” evaluate it against your publication objective. Its official publisher identity, transparent author guidelines, stated review process, current citation metrics and ethics policies are positive evidence of a structured scholarly publishing process. But the decisive issue is still manuscript fit.

How Contentxprtz Can Support Authors Preparing for JAOC

Contentxprtz can support authors who already own and control their research by helping them present it more clearly and in closer alignment with JAOC’s published requirements. Support may include journal-scope alignment review, manuscript assessment, academic editing, substantive editing, proofreading, ESL language polishing, title and abstract refinement, manuscript structure review, journal formatting, reference formatting, figure/table language review, cover-letter editing, reviewer-response editing and revision-stage proofreading.

For this journal specifically, a useful readiness review can check whether the accounting-and-organizational-change contribution is visible early, whether the structured abstract uses the required headings, whether the manuscript stays within the stated length, whether references follow a recognized Harvard style, and whether anonymous-review files are clean.

Contentxprtz does not control editorial decisions and does not guarantee journal acceptance or publication. Professional support is intended to improve clarity, consistency, formatting and publication readiness while preserving ethical authorship.