The Role of Text Analytics and Information Retrieval in the Accounting Domain

Today, much of the financial information is released through text documents and various groups use the written information to make financial decisions. So far, several studies in the field of analysis and retrieval of accounting documents and texts have been undertaken worldwide which could have an impact on the perception of the users of this information. Given the problems of users in utilizing in financial reports, accessibility and the ability to understand the information and the issues related information retrieval are investigated as the main objectives in this study. Therefore, The present paper examines the present body of literature in two major areas relevant to text analytics and information retrieval in the domain of accounting as follows: 1. the content analysis and readability of accounting narratives, and related text-mining work, and 2. the information retrieval literature stream that addresses the extraction of both text elements as well as quantities imbedded in text from accounting documents. The problem of the lack of a uniform terminology effect of issues about accessibility and ability to understand the information. Finally this study tries to offer a road map for future research in the field of accounting documents and data retrieval that includes 1) the success of standard setters in achieving of their goals, 2) construction of glossary of accounting, 3) identify of new words entered to glossary and 4) standardization of accounting terminology.