Living in a contradictory world: CPA's admission to SSCI

On May 8, 2015, a little more than two years after having sent an application to Thomson Reuters, the editorial team of Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) learned that the journal was admitted to the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) – the database that produces impact factor measures. This was a lengthy and frustrating process since, after we applied, there was complete silence from Thomson Reuters. Once we were provided with the information regarding our inclusion, we initially felt relieved since several other accounting journals had, recently, been incorporated into SSCI and we thought that CPA’s exclusion would, in the long run, translate into a competitive disadvantage in terms of attracting new high quality submissions and also disadvantage the careers of CPA authors.