Guidelines for contributors

Accounting Cafe takes its mission seriously but keeps a light touch, reflected in a gentle editorial process. You can support the community by sharing articles, advice, tips, experiences, ideas, lesson plans, or other resources. The guidance below explains what we are looking for.

What an Accounting Cafe article is

An Accounting Cafe article shares a teaching practice that another educator could try for themselves. It describes something you do in your own teaching, what happened when you did it, and what someone else would need to know to adopt it.

Here’s a simple test. Could a colleague at another institution, in another country, read your piece and try it for themselves next week? If yes, you are on the right track. If your piece mainly reports an event, celebrates an institution, or describes something the reader cannot adopt, it’s unlikely to meet our requirements, but get in touch and we will help you find the article inside it.

Your contribution does not need to be original or novel. A key aim of Accounting Cafe is to support educators at every stage of their careers, so a practice that has been part of your teaching for decades is very likely to be new and useful to someone else.

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. It 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 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 contributions that add to the practice of accounting education — for schools, undergraduate, postgraduate, or professional training. This is not an exhaustive list, but your piece might relate to:

• 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 we are not looking for

If your material is one of these, it may still contain a publishable article — talk to us before writing and we will help you find the angle.

• Event or trip reports — write-ups of a visit, conference, or one-off occasion.
• Institutional or programme news, or anything written mainly to promote a school, course, or department.
• Marketing and promotional copy, including supplier, product, or service pitches.
• Thin anecdote — a story with no underlying practice a reader could adopt.
• Pieces written for prospective students or your own institution rather than for educators elsewhere.

How to structure your article

You can structure your article as you see fit, but following this structure will help you meet our criteria.

1. What is the practice? Describe what you do clearly enough that a reader could picture doing it themselves — the design, the rationale, and what it asks of students. Our audience is international and includes students as well as educators, so please explain any institutional, cultural or national terms.
2. What happened when you used it? Show the impact (see below). Make the case that the practice is worthwhile.
3. What should someone else do to try it? Offer the practical advice you would give a colleague adopting it — what to prepare, what to watch for, what you would do differently. Be honest about limits and challenges.

A couple of quotes can bring impact to life, but quotes alone do not establish impact. Tell us what changed, and how you know.

If you would like to see all of this in one place, Brenda Clerkin’s Simulated audit engagement is a good model. It is built around a clearly described practice and supports its claims with student feedback and quotations. It is honest about the resource and scalability challenges and ends with concrete advice for anyone wanting to try it.

Practical requirements

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

• Written articles should be between 500 and 1,200 words.
• Provide comprehensive references with links and enough detail for readers to follow up.
• Define local terms. Institution- or country-specific terms must be explained for an international audience.
• Copyright permissions. Permissions must be clearly expressed (including links) and granted for everything you submit — attachments, images, photographs, graphics, logos, and quotations.
• Images must not include students and must carry suitable alt-text descriptions for accessibility.
• Video or podcast. Audio or video contributions should be roughly 10 minutes and include a written introduction, a typed transcript, and, if possible, closed-caption subtitles.
• Submit in an editable format (not PDF).
• Include a short biography and photograph to accompany your article

What does the editorial process involve?

A small editorial team reviews your contribution. The review is light touch, so do not expect the level of challenge you would meet with a journal submission; it focuses on how well the contribution meets these guidelines.

We may offer constructive suggestions and invite you to revise. If a contribution does not meet the overall aims of Accounting Cafe, the editorial team reserves the right to decline to publish it — but we will always tell you why, and where we can, how it might be reshaped.

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 toby@accountingcafe.org. If you are not sure whether your idea is appropriate, email us a sentence or two first — we are always glad to help you find the article before you write it.

Before you submit: a quick self-check

• It shares a practice, not an event.
• A reader at another institution could adopt it.
• I have given evidence of impact.
• I have included advice for those who want to try it.
• It is written for educators worldwide, with any local terms defined.
• My sources and image permissions are cleared and linked.
• I have included a short biography and photograph.
• I have set up my Accounting Cafe account.