Self-regulation of the academic accounting literature: The case of James Hunton

In 2015, several journal publishers retracted more than 30 papers written by Dr. James E. Hunton (Dr. Hunton) and various other co-authors. Retractions in academic literatures are not entirely rare and they are best understood in terms of their ‘chain effect’ potential impact. There is a first-order effect, namely the findings in the retracted papers are no longer reliable. A second-order effect occurs through other papers that cited and relied upon certain findings in the retracted papers. This paper sets forth the recently retracted papers. It will also be useful in identifying second-order papers to assist editors, other reviewers, and researchers who otherwise may be unaware of retraction details as they are known at this time.

This article sets forth Dr. Hunton's body of work with retractions noted. The article has several goals aimed at effective regulation of the accounting literature. First, it is a resource for researchers to determine whether a paper that they intend to cite has been retracted. Second, it encourages researchers to review and where feasible, replicate other papers authored by Dr. Hunton that have not been retracted to date in order to establish the legitimacy of those findings. Third, it encourages researchers to replicate or otherwise retest research questions in retracted papers so that reliable findings are made available to these questions. Fourth, at the second-order level, it encourages authors that have cited Dr. Hunton's papers to review their papers and where they deem it consistent with scholarly effort, restate their work. Similarly, editors of journals involved in the first- and second-order effects are encouraged to publish the additional analyses to reinforce the credibility of the literature. Fifth, an addition to the literature review process is suggested to assure that no papers in the chain of noted or cited work have been retracted. Finally and importantly, it reminds scholars of the importance of being diligent in their processes for producing, summarizing and retaining data and cross-reviewing data provided by and work completed by co-authors.