This section of the periodical The Accounting Review is devoted to matters of particular interest to accounting instructors. What is the value or usefulness of academic writing? There are probably few words that create as much difficulty and disagreement as the word "value." As a group, accountants are pragmatists (i.e. if it is useful and works, it is good; if it is not useful or does not work, it is not good); therefore, useful could be substituted for "Value." Now to rephrase the question into two parts: Is writing by the academician useful to him? Is writing by the academician useful to the reader? Each of these questions can be broken into two parts what the writer or reader thinks he will get out of a particular article and what in fact he actually does get out of it. This paper will attempt to give a preliminary answer to one part of the questions raised. It will try to say what the academic writer think he wilt get out of publishing an article. To attempt to answer this question a survey was made asking why teachers of accounting write articles.

The author in this article argues that accounting is a liberal arts form of discipline being offered by the colleges of business administration. Accounting is an art. In the process of income determination and asset valuation, one could allocate costs common to more than one period by treating the cost as a function of time, or of production, or of revenue. He insists that the choice and application of these varying principles or approaches is as much a form of art as can be found anywhere. The study of accounting is interdisciplinary rather than a specialization as are many of the other liberal arts subjects. Accounting is also an application of the discipline of mathematics. There has been much written about the need for mathematics as a tool for accounting in forecasting and decision making. In addition to the above, accounting is an application of other disciplines. Psychology is necessarily used to prepare meaningful statements, meaningful, that is, to their reader as well as to their preparer.

Reviews the book "Financial Accounting," by Roger H. Hermanson, James Don Edwards and Ray H. Garrison.

Reviews the book "1977 Accounting Research Convocation: Papers Presented at the 1977 Accounting Research Convocation on the Subject of Patterns of Change," edited by Jonathan Davies.

Reviews the book "Introduction to Mathematical Programming for Accountants," by Bryan V. Carsberg.