Latest Circular from the Vice Chancellor

Hope all ARI members took notice of VC's latest circular today. Basically, with immediate effect, (1) all publications by staff and students must spell out their affiliation with Universiti Teknologi MARA. This includes staff who are now post graduate students and are registered with other universities; (2) The university will only sponsor papers presented by staff and post-graduate students in Scopus or ISI Thomson-indexed conferences; (3) Those who are organizing international conferences for the university must register and index their conferences with Scopus or ISI-Thomson; (4)Those under sabbatical leave are to publish their papers in Scopus or ISI journals. Understandably, this drastic policy has to be put in place so that we are focused on producing articles that are ultimately published in indexed journals and indexed proceedings.

Thanks Rajmah and Zeenee

Two journalists, Rajmah from Utusan Malaysia and Zeenee from the New Straits Times visited ARI this morning. The purpose of the visit was basically for them to get first-hand information about the Accounting Research Institute as they are preparing a write up about the university's research agenda for their forthcoming publications. It was indeed refreshing to be able to tell them about ARI: our plans, vision and initiatives in bringing UiTM to greater heights. As the university is moving very fast to get its Research University (RU) status from the Ministry of Higher education, centres of excellence such as ARI can play a crucial role in making sure that we (ARI and its members) ourselves will achieve all our targets in terms of publication, research collaboration, national and international research fundings and the production of graduates in post-graduate studies. As they were told, ARI specializes in applied research - conducting collaborative research with the industry and to solve business problems...

Just a Kind Reminder....

To All UiTM scholars (Staff, students, young lecturers): Please be deliberate to include your affiliation with Universiti Teknologi MARA for all your papers presented at conferences or published in journals. We have seen scholars who have only included the name of the university that they are currently attending without any mention of UiTM. Acknowledgement alone is not enough....

Grants from the SSRC

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) which is based in Broklyn New York is currently advertising for international fellowships and grants that you can apply:
1. International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) deadline: November 3rd 2009
2. Islam and Muslims in World Contexts n/a
3. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS)Fellowship December 1st 2009
4. Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop n/a
5. Mellon Mays Predoctoral Research Grants November 1st 2009
6. SSRC-CUP Book Fellowship n/a
7. SSRC-Mellon Mays Predoctoral Research Grant n/a
8. SSRC-Van Alen Fellows Program n/a

For details, please browse http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/all/

Indexing Your Book Chapters

There are a lot of free software that you can download and use to prepare the index section of your book or book chapters. Familiarise yourself with this software as the use of these tools can really facilitate your effort. Sample index software includes Macrex V8, TExtract, wINDEX etc

A Gutsy Lady Professor - Azni

It was Professor Dr Azni's turn to deliver her professorial lecture this morning. With the topic "Climate Change, Green Technology and Sustainable Buildings" she gave an impressive lecture to benchmark. Though there were so many of us who are non-scientists, she did a great job as we could understand her lecture very well. People said, "A great teacher inspires..." that's who Azni is... Though very busy and occupied with her administrative duties, she still makes time for things that she is passionate about - her research. Congratulations, we are so proud of you...

Workshop on Indexing

In view of the many books and book chapters that the lecturers have been working on for this year, ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy organised a 2 hour indexing workshop. The facilitator, Ms Khasiah is a senior deputy chief librarian from PTAR who herself has a lot of experience with book indexing job. About twenty members attended the workshop. A more comprehensive "hands-on" workshop will be organized in the future.

Visit from Cyber Security

Two officers from Cyber Security (Mr Roshdi and Mr Razman) visited ARI today. Cyber Security is an entity formed under MOSTI that specializes in providing expertise in cyber-related security. MOSTI has plan to convert Cyber Security into its Centre of Excellence. We had great discussion, basically sharing ARI's experiences and ARI's own evolution from a simple special interest group (SIG) to a research institute. There's great potential for the two entities to work collaboratively in perhaps research and publication projects. ARI plans to visit the company in the near future for further discussions.

JoFRA Acquisition by Emerald International

ARI wishes to inform all members that as of 31 August 2009, one of our journals: Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting (JoFRA)has been acquired by the Emerald International Publishing Group. Nevertheless UiTM maintains the editorialship of the journal. Emerald will commence to publish JoFRA using its own logo in 2010. We hope that this exercise will bring JoFRA to greater height. The journal will get wider readership, better citation potential and better prospect of being indexed by Scopus/ISI Thomson.

Research in Accounting education

More and more scholars are now keen to do research in accounting education. Do you know that there's an international body called the International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER) that collaborates with the international accounting firm KPMG that champion researches in this area? Attached is an excerpt that is available on IAAER website that is calling for researchers to apply for research grants.

"The International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER), KPMG LLP and the KPMG Foundation are pleased to invite research proposals under the Informing the IASB Standard Setting Process Research Program. The program supports scholarly research directed at informing the IASB’s decision process on any current agenda item. Up to five research grants will be awarded under this program.

Submissions due September 30, 2009". For details, please visit http://www.iaaer.org/research/