Guidelines for contributors

Accounting Cafe takes its mission seriously but has a light touch, which is reflected in its gentle editorial process. Support the community by contributing articles, advice, tips, experiences, ideas, lesson plans, or other resources.

Ten reasons to contribute to Accounting Cafe

1. Your contribution demonstrates “scholarship output” and is evidence of external engagement. In many universities, this is considered in promotion processes.
2. This is an excellent way to get started if you have not done much writing before or are developing a new practice area.
3. You share your practice with accounting educators from across the world.
4. You receive feedback from a friendly and experienced editorial team and through user comments on the website.
5. You have a safe space to share your ideas in an appreciative and supportive community before presenting more formally, for example, at a conference.
6. Your contribution is more likely to be accepted because the process is more straightforward and less formal than writing for a journal.
7. Contributing helps you to develop other outputs, such as conference presentations and journal articles.
8. You have better opportunities to find like-minded collaborators with shared interests and different perspectives.
9. Your contributions form part of your portfolio for institutional teaching and learning qualifications.
10. You can use your published contributions as evidence when applying for external accreditations and funding.

What’s Accounting Cafe looking for?

We are looking for submissions that contribute to the practice of accounting education, whether pre-university, undergraduate, postgraduate, or professional training in accounting.

We are particularly interested in teaching practices you have found to be effective. Your contribution does not need to be unique or novel. A key theme of Accounting Cafe is to provide resources that support educators at any stage in their careers. So, what has been part of your practice for decades is likely to be innovative to somebody else.

This is not an exhaustive list, but your contribution might relate to teaching practices in any of these areas:

• Teaching approaches
• Lesson or course sequencing
• Developing learning outcomes
• Effective ways to explain principles and concepts
• Ways to engage students
• Methods of assessments
• Assignments
• In class activities

What are the criteria for contributions?

Submissions that do not meet these criteria may be considered, but please check with the editorial team before preparing and submitting.

1. Contributions must outline:
   • The practice you are sharing.
   • Its impact (e.g., student, colleague feedback, other impacts)
   • Advice you would give others wishing to adopt it.
2. Copyright permissions must be clearly expressed (including links) and granted for all submitted materials, including attachments, images, photographs, graphics, logos and quotations.
   • Images must not include students.
   • Images must contain suitable alt-text descriptions for accessibility.
   • Institutional or national-specific terms must be defined. The audience is international and may include accounting students as well as educators.
3. Written articles should be between 500 and 1,200 words.
4. Video or podcast contributions should be approximately 10 minutes and include a written introduction, typed transcript and, if possible, closed caption subtitles.
5. Comprehensive references with links and details enabling users to follow up must be provided.

What does the editorial process involve?

There is a small editorial team at Accounting Cafe who will review your contribution.

The review is light touch, so don’t expect the same level of challenge or feedback that you would receive with a journal article submission. It focusses on the extent to which the contribution meets the guidelines.

Constructive feedback suggestions may be provided with an invitation to revise your contribution, if appropriate. If your contribution does not meet the overall aims of Accounting Cafe, the editorial team reserves the right to decline to publish it.

Copyright, license and indemnity

You retain copyright and moral rights in any materials published by Accounting Cafe. Accounting Cafe places no restrictions on where your work is otherwise published, deposited, or archived.

All your materials are deemed submitted and granted under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) licence.

Accounting Cafe has the right, but no obligation, at any time to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for non-commercial purposes. Accounting Cafe will give you appropriate credit.

You cannot revoke these freedoms if Accounting Cafe follows the license terms.

You represent, warrant, and agree that no materials you submit violate or infringe upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights, or contain libellous, defamatory, or otherwise harmful material.

You agree to hold harmless, indemnify, and at our request, defend Accounting Cafe, its parents, subsidiaries, and other affiliated entities and their respective owners, officers, managers, agents and employees from and against any third-party claim arising from or in any way related to your material, your use of, conduct on the Site, including any liability or expense arising from all claims, liabilities, losses, damages (actual and consequential), suits, judgments, litigation costs, expenses and lawyers fees, for every kind and nature. In such a case, we will provide you with written notice of such claim, suit or action to the address you registered with us.

How do I submit a contribution?

Submit all relevant material in an editable format (not PDF) to [email protected].