A Retrospective.

Abstract The article reviews actions taken by the author as the editor to the journal "The Accounting Review." According to the author, one of the most important decisions taken by him was to decentralize the editorial review process and to designate three individuals to serve as sub-editors beginning in 1980. Approximately one in five of the new manuscripts received since the second half of 1980 were handled by sub-editors, who chose reviewers and made editorial decisions. Sub-editors were assigned manuscripts falling within their respective areas of expertise, thus enabling a more sensitive assessment of the potential of each manuscript. In his opinion this experiment with decentralization has been a success. While the concept of decentralization has thus been shown to work, the measure of its success is unquestionably a function of talents of the three academics Bob Swieringa, Bill Kinney and Dan Collins, who so ably served as sub-editors. Another decision requiring considerable thought and consultation was related to the journal's policy on reproduction of articles. Although some journals had begun assessing a per-page or per-article fee for such reproduction and others had announced no policy at all under the Copyright Act of 1976, the journal decided upon perhaps the most liberal of possible policies.