Keywords

Audit Quality, Bibliometric, IFRS Adoption, Scopus, VOS Viewer.

Introduction

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as issued by IASB in 2001 are meant to provide high-quality accounting reporting and comparable accounting information across the globe. Recently, there are more than 120 countries are keyed into IFRS adoption seeking to enhance their accounting reporting and to be in line with developed practices. With the increased development in local and multinational business practices, IFRS have had sustainable developments and amendments that required multiple professional judgments. This situation has heightened the need to have a high level of audit quality that can meet this continuous development in the accounting profession and business environment. Moreover, it unleashes the powers of the international bodies of accounting and auditing such as Public Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), International Assurance Auditing Standards Board (IAASB), Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), and International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) to try persistently to improve the quality of audits around the world.

There have been many debates in the concept of audit quality among scholars and professional bodies that make ambiguity on what it means (e.g., IAASB 2014; CAQ 2016, 2019; PCAOB 2013, 2015a, 2018). Theoretically, yet, beyond the notion that claimed that better audit quality leads to better financial reporting quality under certain accounting standards, a little consensus emerges in the scant literature as to how best audit quality can be defined (Gaynor et al., 2016). DeAngelo (1981), the father of the audit quality concept, defines audit quality as the market-assessed joint probability that allows an auditor to both detect material misstatements of financial statements and report those material misstatements to the public. The concept of audit quality has become much extensive after differences audit quality practices that arise from different firms across the world including Enron (2001), WorldCom (2006), and Wels Fargo bank (2016) in the USA, Nortel in Canada (2011), Satyam Corporation in India (2015), and Al-Mojil Group in Saudi Arabia (2015). All these deficient audit quality practices occurred due to fraud allegations and auditing infidelity shortly after the report of external auditors that led to severe consequences to different stakeholders.

As financial statements prepared at either IFRS or any accounting standards, are meant to reflect accurately the underlining economic reality of firms, some professional bodies declared that the quality of the financial statements is conditioned by the quality of the accounting information and the quality of the system (either monitoring system or those who are engaging in preparing this information) at different clients (IFAC, 2014; CAQ, 2014). So, the audit system in this case would lend itself to increase the quality of the accounting information and the quality of the monitoring system within a certain organization for decision making (Knechel et al., 2013). In turn, if the underlying economic purpose is absent, the accounting information is deficient, and the system is weak, that could affect the adherence of a specific firm to the accounting standards such as IFRS. In this case, an audit firm needs to work hard in clarifying weaknesses to the management of the firm and in the audit report to the stakeholders of the organization.

In 2014, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) agreed with the difficulty of understanding audit quality and provided a framework guideline discussion on audit quality. The guideline declared that auditors, audit firms, other stakeholders, and regulators can do more to increase audit quality in their environments. Moreover, it stated that the responsibility for performing quality audits of financial statements does not rest only on auditors but also can be achieved through the appropriate interactions among participants in the financial reporting supply chain (IAASB, 2014). A continuous effort is made professionally as well by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to improve the understanding of audit quality concepts through releasing a concept that identifies 28 possible audit quality indicators (AQIs) (PCAOB, 2015). The concept released seeks to identify the potential value to audit committees, audit firms, investors, and regulators. The PCAOB’s proposal recognizes the importance of the financial reporting quality as well (the quality of accounting standards such as IFRS) as effective measures in providing ultimately a meaningful understanding of audit quality.

To inform the sustained discussions surrounding the potential public dissemination of AQI, this study provides a comprehensive review in IFRS adoption and audit quality measures around the world from 2005-2019 using the effective bibliometric analytical technique to enhance the discussion of the PCAOB and other professional accounting and auditing bodies on the audit quality. To the best of our knowledge, this study is among the first efforts to carry out a bibliometric analysis on IFRS and audit quality research domain. Moreover, the study aims to understand the trends of academic efforts made in developed and emerging markets in IFRS adoption, as quality financial reporting standards that have been adopted widely, and audit quality as an extensively developed concept with different understanding around the globe.

Literature Review

The current literature review concentrates on findings concerning audit quality and its proxies to evaluate the degree of effectiveness of IFRS adoption. The quality possessed by an external auditor of financial statements act as a crucial mechanism to regulate the opportunistic conduct of officers and managers. It is believed that audit quality relies upon the competencies and independence of external auditors, which is typically associated with the size of the audit firm (Bouchareb, 2014). Hence, the size or magnitude of external audit firms can be utilized as a useful proxy to measure audit quality. The study of Hassan and Rehman (2019) explains this view that the core responsibility of the auditor is to detect errors in financial reports and record misstatements. Reputable or large audit companies remain relatively unlikely to engage themselves in producing low-quality audits as they remain equipped with qualified professionals. Findings conclude that IFRS adoption tends to reduce the degree of earnings management, hence improve audit quality, especially for firms that associate themselves with Big 8, now Big 4, audit companies to maximize the efficacy of their financial disclosures.

The auditor pricing decision is perceived as another measure for audit quality. Abu Risheh & Al-Saeed (2014) explains that different magnitude of audit firms’ charges varying audit fees, often based upon the degree of audit quality supplied to clients. Hence, a higher audit premium is likely to result in improved audit quality. Ball (2006) also agrees with this statement, further suggesting that the level of training, compensation, independence, along with auditor status are significant elements that influence the overall quality of financial inspection after IFRS adoption. In a similar context, Marden & Brackney (2009) report that reputable accounting companies are likely to deliver professional education required for accountants to undertake appropriate judgments and adequate compliance. In relation to the adoption of new standards, larger auditing firms are expected to invest more resources in improving audit quality relative to low-quality audit services. Cabal-García et al. (2019) highlight that the Big 4 auditing firms are specifically targeted by the public and members of authorities and therefore remain subject to more scrutinized checks than other auditors. Hence IFRS adoption, while being in contract with reputable auditors, tends to produce high-quality audits (Garrouch et al., 2014).

Abu Risheh & Al-Saeed (2014) reports that unlike previous local standards, IFRS proves to be more inclusive and efficient, reserving far more accuracy when it comes to supplying targeted and factual financial information to investors and other relevant parties. The factors of refined comparability, timeliness, understandability, and verifiability that the transition of IFRS yields enable auditors to improve what they do (Jung et al., 2016). Lahmar & Ali (2017) highlight that auditors must provide insights concerning the most efficient allocation of resources available at the disposable of the respective firm. The study supplied by Reid Carcello & Neal (2016) asserts these findings by undertaking research within the developed market of the UK and providing evidence that IFRS implementation improves the tendency to consider operations and activities that significantly enhance the allocation of available resources which eventually points towards the increased audit quality element.

The efficiency of audits can also be reviewed by Audit Report Lags, which can be defined as the duration of time demanded by a firm to generate financial statements in a particular, fiscal year indicating the timeliness of auditors and accountants (Shan et al., 2015). One can argue here that the quality of audit reports will positively improve with the reduction in audit report lags. Kawshalya & Srinath (2019) highlight that shorter audit report lags or timely disclosure of audited financial statements are associated with increased usefulness and benefits that investors, creditors, and shareholders can derive from such disclosures. The study concludes that adoption or switch to IFRS possess a significant negative link between audit report lag since a sudden change in accounting practices requires substantial efforts in educating auditors with the advanced principles and rules needed to comply with IFRS. Fodio et al. (2015) also support these findings highlighting that IFRS implementation extended the time duration required to disclose an audit report demonstrating the complexities and incremental costs associated with IFRS adoption in the case of Nigerian banks. Large intervals in financial information do not only aggravates uncertainty based on the decisions of market participants but additionally decrease the relevance of audit documents as they paint a picture of becoming outdated (Modugu et al., 2012).

Empirical research carried out by Fiona (2013) questions the relationship between IFRS adoption and the levels of trust between external auditors and internal management and whether this influences the quality of published audits. Findings prove that the implementation of IFRS holds the ability to improve client-auditor relationships enhancing the audit quality by generating inspected statements promptly. Improved audit quality is also examined under the perspective of enforcing goodwill accounting principles, as stated in the IFRS demanding auditors to measure accurate goodwill impairment and manage impairment losses against revenues earned in the same period. Since most previously adopted accounting practices did not necessarily accommodate impairment costs to reflect the company’s economic goodwill, the new regime, depending upon the degrees of its implementation and enforcement, caters to higher audit quality by revealing more credible accounting data (Strokes & Webster, 2010). In a similar context, Jarva (2014) agrees that implementing the advance impairment regime demands extensive professional expertise and judgment to be practiced by preparers, therefore welcoming opportunities for managerial bias and interpretation that requires additional auditing efforts. An increase in such efforts and diligence is thought to be associated with improved efficiency of audit reports (Abu Risheh & Al-Saeed, 2014)

Data and Methodology

The data used to achieve the study objectives were sourced from the Scopus database. The Scopus database is the largest collection of scholarly published works with over 41,000 titles. The database was launched in 2004 by Elsevier. First, the search query link was used. Specific keywords typed into the search query contained “IFRS” and “Audit Quality” were used to generate the data analyzed in this study. The result from the search query is shown as {ALL ("IFRS" AND "Audit Quality") AND PUBYEAR > 2004 AND PUBYEAR < 2020}. The search was performed on 29th June 2020, 10:22 am. The publication year start date is 2004. The justification for starting from the year 2004 is due to the adoption and implementation of IFRS by most developed countries.

A total of 1,019 documents met the search criteria and formed the data used for analysis performed in this study. The data for the 1019 documents included the following 4 key fields: citation information, bibliographical information, abstract and keywords, and funding details. The citation information consists of Authors’ name, document title, year of publication, source title (journal outlet), citation count, digital object identifier, volume, issues, and pages. The bibliographical information includes institutional affiliations, serial identifiers (ISSN), publisher, and correspondence address. The abstract and keywords field contains abstract, author keywords, and index keywords. Lastly, the funding details filed consists of funding numbers, acronym, and sponsor. The extracted data were exported as a Comma Separated Version (CSV) file format. The study made use of VOSViewer and MS Excel for data visualization and relevant statistical analysis. The CSV file was uploaded to the VOSViewer for network, overlay, and density visualization

Results and Discussion

Documents and Source Typeof Volatility

This section shows the different classification of 1019 documents used for this bibliometric study. This classification consists of document and source type. Table 1 present the classification based on the document type. Article publication has the highest percentage with 914 documents. This shows that majority of the authors' work is available as full-length article as oppose to conference papers where only abstracts are published.

Table 1 Document Type
Document Type	Total Publications (TP)	Percentage (%)
Article	914	89.7
Review	34	3.3
Conference Paper	21	2.1
Book	20	2.0
Book Chapter	16	1.5
Editorial	4	0.4
Note	4	0.4
Undefined	6	0.6
Total	1019	100.0

Table 2 shows the classification based on the source type. There are four types of sources where the 1019 documents are published. Among these four sources, Journal recorded the highest with 95.1%

Table 2 Source Type
Document Type	Total Publications (TP)	Percentage (%)
Journal	969	95.1
Book	32	3.1
Conference Proceedings	10	1.0
Book Series	8	0.8
Total	1019	100.0

Yearly publication distribution

The main objective is to highlight the ability of the transactions of purchases and sales in explaining the asymmetry of volatility. So, in order to determine the impact of transaction activity and exchange direction on volatility, we choose to regress to the following equations:

Based on the 1019 documents used for this study, figure 1 shows the yearly publication distribution from 2005-2019. In 2005, only one publication was related to IFRS and audit quality research. The article is titled “Earnings management under German GAAP versus IFRS” authored by Van Tendeloo & Vanstraelen (2005). Their paper addresses the question of whether voluntary adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with lower earnings management in Germany. They indicate that voluntary adopters of IFRS in Germany cannot be associated with lower earnings management. In 2006, no publication was recorded on the Scopus database using our search query. However, there has been a steady growth in the number of publications on the subject area from 2009 to 2019. The year 2019 recorded the highest number of publications with 219 documents as shown in figure 1.

Languages of Documents

The 1019 documents are published in seven different languages. This is presented in Table 3. Among these seven languages, English has the highest document with 98.1% followed by Portuguese with 0.7%. Korean and German language recorded the lowest publication with one document representing 0.1% each.

Table 3 Document Type
Language	Total Publications (TP)	Percentage (%)
English	1000	98.1
Portuguese	6	0.7
Spanish	5	0.5
Chinese	4	0.4
French	2	0.2
German	1	0.1
Korean	1	0.1
Total	1019	100.0

Publishing Activity by Country

Authors from 83 countries have contributed at least one scholarly publication on IFRS and audit quality research. Figure 2 shows the co-authorship of countries from VOS Viewer. The country with the highest number of scholarly publications is the United States with total link strength of 118. The following countries recorded only one document Vietnam, Uruguay, Tanzania, Syria Arab Republic, Sri Lanka, Peru, Morocco, Mexico, Luxembourg, Israel, Hungary, Georgia, Estonia, Denmark, and Albania.

Unit of analysis = Countries

Counting method: Fractional counting

Minimum number of documents of a country = 1

Minimum number of citations of a country = 0

Table 4 shows the top 10 countries that contributed to the publications in IFRS and audit quality research. The country topping the list is the United States with 248 documents, amounting to 29.2%. These documents have been cited 5356 times. Among the top 10 countries, South Korea has the lowest count with 41 documents amounting to 4.8%.

Table 4 Top 10 Countries Contribution to the Publications
Country	Documents	Percentage (%)	Citations
United States	248	29.2	5356
Australia	114	13.4	1377
United Kingdom	98	11.6	1187
China	93	11.0	714
Malaysia	65	7.7	416
Canada	55	6.5	736
Germany	47	5.5	443
Hong Kong	44	5.2	1181
Spain	43	5.1	260
South Korea	41	4.8	187

Authors and Co-Authorship

This section presents the prolific authors in IFRS and audit quality research domain in terms of the volume of scholarly outputs published. 2010 authors met the threshold selected in the VOSViewer. 376 out of 2010 authors have the largest set of connected items. Fig. 3 shows the network visualization map of authors and co-authors from VOS Viewer.

Unit of analysis = Authors

Counting method: Fractional counting

Minimum number of documents of an author = 1

Minimum number of citations of an author = 0

Table 5 present the top 10 most published authors in IFRS and audit quality research domain. The author with the highest number of publications is Kim, J.B of City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong with 12 documents with 209 citations. Among these top 10 prolific authors, Zhang, J of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China recorded the highest number of citations (533 citations) with 8 documents. The author with the lowest number of documents among the top 10 most published authors is Ahmed, K. of La Trobe University in Australia with 6 documents and 125 citations

Table 5 Top 10 Most Published Authors in IFRS and Audit Quality
Author	Institutional Affiliation	Country	Documents	Percentage	Citations
Kim, J.-B.	City University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	12	14.5	209
Lee, E.	University of Manchester	United Kingdom	9	10.8	94
Ozili, P.K.	University of Essex	United Kingdom	9	10.8	63
Uwuigbe, U.	Covenant University	Nigeria	9	10.8	43
Iatridis, G.E.	University of Thessaly	Greece	8	9.6	84
Uwuigbe, O.R.	Covenant University	Nigeria	8	9.6	37
Zhang, J.	Xi’an Jiaotong University	China	8	9.6	533
Habib, A.	Massey University	New Zealand	7	8.4	101
Li, L.	University of Pennsylvania	United States	7	8.4	99
Ahmed, K.	La Trobe University	Australia	6	7.2	125

Most Active Source Titles

An analysis of the most active outlets where IFRS and audit quality research has been published is presented in this section in Table 6.

Table 6 Top 20 Outlet of IFRS and Audit Quality Research (2005-2019)
Source	Publisher	TP	TC	SJR 2019	SNIP 2019	Cite Score 2019
Accounting Review	American Accounting Association	31	1981	5.446	3.729	7.1
Auditing	American Accounting Association	30	436	1.822	1.706	4.0
Managerial Auditing Journal	Emerald	28	214	0.468	1.271	2.7
International Journal of Accounting	Elsevier	23	350	0.450	1.259	2.9
International Journal of Auditing	Wiley-Blackwell	22	93	0.394	0.979	2.0
Asian Review of Accounting	Emerald	20	127	0.323	0.892	2.0
Australian Accounting Review	Wiley-Blackwell	20	189	0.386	1.023	2.2
European Accounting Review	Taylor & Francis	19	484	0.973	1.575	3.9
Contemporary Accounting Research	Wiley-Blackwell	18	174	2.207	2.274	4.3
Journal of Accounting and Public Policy	Elsevier	18	159	1.125	1.948	4.6
Advances in Accounting	Elsevier	17	193	0.392	0.721	1.9
International Journal of Accounting and Information Management	Emerald	17	144	0.494	1.565	2.7
Journal of International Accounting, Auditing, and Taxation	Elsevier	16	148	0.421	1.203	2.0
Corporate Governance (Bingley)	Emerald	15	77	0.574	1.396	3.3
Corporate Ownership and Control	Virtus Interpress	15	12	NA	NA	NA
Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics	Elsevier	15	148	0.581	1.286	2.5
Accounting and Finance	Wiley-Blackwell	13	95	0.43	1.36	2.5
Journal of Applied Accounting Research	Emerald	13	73	0.349	0.951	2.0
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting	Wiley-Blackwell	13	262	0.874	1.47	2.7
Journal of International Accounting Research	American Accounting Association	13	51	0.397	0.832	1.8

There are 298 outlets where authors have published their scholarly work on IFRS and audit quality. The top 20 outlets were presented in table 6. Accounting review published by the American Accounting Association is the source with the highest number of publications recording 31 scholarly output. These 31 publications have been cited in 1981 times. This journal is among the top 10% source with the highest cite score on the Scopus database. Following Accounting Review Journal, Auditing is the source with the second highest number of publications with 30 articles with a cite score of 4.0. The lowest source among the top 20 outlets presented above is the Journal of International Accounting Research published by American Accounting Association with a cite score of 1.8. There is 13 scholarly outputs in the Journal of International Accounting Research for the time frame considered in this bibliometric study.

Keywords Analysis

An analysis of author keywords used in IFRS and audit quality literature was performed to determine the trend of research in the domain. Figure 4 shows the density visualization map of author keywords.

Unit of analysis = Author Keywords

Counting method: Fractional counting

Minimum number of occurrence of a keyword = 1

There are 2137 keywords from scholarly publications in the research domain. From the density visualization map above, it is evidenced that earnings management and IFRS are two keywords with the highest publication count. This is further presented in table 7. Earnings management is the keyword with most publication count. 136 scholarly documents included earnings management as a keyword. Following earning management, corporate governance is the second among the top 10 keywords trend having 105 documents. Audit quality has 100 publications. The lowest keyword among the top 10 is financial reporting.

Table 7 Top 10 Keywords Trend
Keyword	Total Publications	Percentage
Earnings Management	136	20.2
Corporate Governance	105	15.6
Audit Quality	100	14.9
IFRS	93	13.8
Audit Fees	51	7.6
Earnings Quality	45	6.7
Discretionary Accruals	37	5.5
China	36	5.3
Financial reporting quality	36	5.3
Financial reporting	34	5.1

Most Influential Institutions

There are 1847 participating institutions for research in IFRS and audit quality. Table 8 presents the top 20 institutions with a minimum of 3 documents. The City University of Hong Kong is the most influential institution with 7 scholarly publications recording 99 citations. Following this, University of Thessaly, Greece has 6 documents with 64 citations. There are five institutions with 5 documents each. These are Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran), Temple University (United States), University of Houston (United States), University of Kentucky (United States), University of South Florida (United States). The institutions with lowest documents recording 3 documents each are Xiamen University (Hong Kong), American University (United States), Arizona State University (United States), Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), Covenant University (Nigeria), Deakin University (Australia).

Table 8 Top 20 Influential Institutions
Organization	Country	Documents	Percentage	Citations
City University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	7	8.3	99
University of Thessaly	Greece	6	7.1	64
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad	Iran	5	6.0	16
Temple University	United States	5	6.0	65
University of Houston	United States	5	6.0	69
University of Kentucky	United States	5	6.0	84
University of South Florida	United States	5	6.0	119
Depaul University	United States	4	4.8	100
Emory University	United States	4	4.8	84
Georgia State University	United States	4	4.8	189
Michigan State University	United States	4	4.8	89
Monash University	Australia	4	4.8	58
University of Sydney	Australia	4	4.8	15
Wake Forest University	United States	4	4.8	127
Xiamen University	China	3	3.6	50
American University	United States	3	3.6	39
Arizona State University	United States	3	3.6	29
Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong	3	3.6	463
Covenant University	Nigeria	3	3.6	9
Deakin University	Australia	3	3.6	11

Citation Analysis

An analysis of the top 20 most cited publications in the IFRS and audit quality domain is presented in table 9. The document with the highest citations is titled “a review of archival Auditing research” published by Defond & Zhang (2014). This article was published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics. In this article, they define higher audit quality as a greater assurance of high financial reporting quality. Researchers use many proxies for audit quality, with little guidance on choosing among them. They provided a framework for systematically evaluating the unique strengths and weaknesses of audit quality proxies. Because it is inextricably intertwined with financial reporting quality, audit quality also depends on firms' innate characteristics and financial reporting systems. Their review of the models commonly used to disentangle these constructs suggests the need for better conceptual guidance. Finally, they urge more research on the role of auditor and client competency in driving audit quality. The keywords used are Audit quality; Audit quality models; Audit quality proxies; Auditing; Auditor incentives; Client incentives; Competencies; Financial reporting quality

Table 9 Highly Cited Articles
S/N	Authors	Year	Titles	Citations
1	Defond, M., Zhang, J.	2014	A review of archival auditing research	477
2	Lennox, C.S., Francis, J.R., Wang, Z.	2012	Selection models in accounting research	430
3	Dhaliwal, D.S., Radhakrishnan, S., Tsang, A., Yang, Y.G.	2012	Nonfinancial disclosure and analyst forecast accuracy: International evidence on corporate social responsibility disclosure	429
4	Armstrong, C.S., Barth, M.E., Jagolinzer, A.D., Riedl, E.J.	2010	Market reaction to the adoption of IFRS in Europe	298
5	Dichev, I.D., Graham, J.R., Harvey, C.R., Rajgopal, S.	2012	Earnings quality: evidence from the field	249
6	Van Tendeloo, B., Vanstraelen, A.	2005	Earnings management under German GAAP versus IFRS	222
7	Leuz, C., Wysocki, P.D.	2016	The economics of disclosure and financial reporting regulation: evidence and suggestions for future research	206
8	Lang, M., Lins, K.V., Maffett, M.	2012	Transparency, liquidity, and valuation: international evidence on when transactions matters most	174
9	Leuz, C.	2010	Different approaches to corporate reporting regulation: how jurisdictions differ and why	162
10	Chen, H., Tang, Q., Jiang, Y., Lin, Z.	2010	The role of international financial reporting standards in accounting quality: evidence from the European Union	161
11	Shipman, J.E., Swanquist, Q.T., Whited, R.L.	2017	Propensity score matching in accounting research	160
12	Ball, R.	2009	Market and political/regulatory perspectives on the recent accounting scandals	154
13	Humphrey, C., Loft, A., Woods, M.	2009	The global audit profession and the international financial architecture: understanding regulatory relationships at a time of financial crisis	134
14	Brown, P. Preiato, J., Tarca, A.	2014	Measuring country differences in enforcement of accounting standards: an audit and enforcement proxy	113
15	Hope, O.K., Thomas, W.B., Vyas, D.	2013	Financial reporting quality of U.S private and public firms	107
16	Guedhami, O., Pittman, J.A., Saffar, W.	2014	Auditor choice in politically connected firms	94
17	Glaum, M., Schmidt, P., Street, D.L., Vogel, S.	2013	Compliance with IFRS 3 and IAS 36 required disclosures across 17 European countries: company and country-level determinants	86
18	Lang, M., Maffett, M.	2011	Transparency and liquidity uncertainty in crisis periods	82
19	Kathy Hurtt, R., Brown-Liburd, H., Earley, C.E., Krishnamoorthy, G.	2013	Research on auditor professional skepticism: literature synthesis and opportunities for future research	79
20	Marra, A., Mazzola, P., Prencipe, A.	2011	Board monitoring and earnings management pre and post IFRS	79

Conclusion

This study offers a unique perspective on IFRS and audit quality as a subdomain of accounting research as it provides a holistic overview of different research themes that frequently occur within leading accounting and auditing journals. First, the descriptive part of this study reveals that IFRS and audit quality research domain has attracted growing attention in the leading accounting and auditing journals especially between 2009-2019. The adoption of IFRS by many developing countries can be linked to the increase in publications.

In conclusion, this paper specifically employs a bibliometric approach to quantitatively analyze the volume and impact of 1019 publications in IFRS and audit quality research domain. The study focused on determining the yearly distribution, national contributions, leading prolific authors, most productive institutions, publication outlets, authorship patterns, document types, the language of documents, and citation trends of IFRS and audit quality research publication from 2005-2019. The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have now been implemented and routinely practiced in over 120 jurisdictions, while some of these nations have partially shifted their accounting practices to those enlisted in IFRS, including China. Whereas a country like the United States yet remains reluctant to adopt such practices. In contrast, a few economies like Iran still find themselves examining the feasibility and utility of these standards (Mohammadrezaei et al., 2015). The worldwide implementation of IFRS has initiated theoretical and empirical research emphasizing on that probability that whether the quality and efficiency of financial reporting improves following IFRS adoption via enhanced value relevance, reduced discretionary accruals, improved analysts forecast accuracy and other measures (Clarkson et al., 2011; Houqe et al., 2012; Kim & Shi, 2012; Cordo? et al., 2020). However, Ahmed et al. (2013) report that this strand of research has produced mixed findings and therefore are unable to reach a conclusion.

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