Proceedings

present the information, but is difficult to extract it (Alles et al., 2004). The solution
was the use of XML. This language adds all the information in tags, making easier for
computers to read the data, to search and to extract it in different kind of programs.
XBRL is created based on XML. It has the same proprieties, but it usage refers to just
financial data exchanging. (Srinivas, 2004)
XBRL is an electronic communication reporting language that facilitates disclosure of
financial information over the internet, simplifying disclosure and allowing
companies to communicate financial information more readily (Zambon and
Marzo, 2007).
The communication language is gaining more and more field in financial information
disclosure research. At the present, there are 18 countries with XBRL established
jurisdictions and 5 countries that have provisional jurisdiction . Besides them, there are
5 other independent jurisdictions, including International Accounting Standards
Board. Only in Europe there are 11 established jurisdictions and 3 provisional
jurisdictions.
The history of XBRL begins in 1998, when Charles Hoffman, a certified public
accountant, has the idea to develop an XML version for accounting and audit. But the
fast forward jump was made in 2008, when SEC (Securities and Exchange
Commision) proposed new rules that mandate listed companies from US stock
exchange to prepare their financial statements in accordance with US GAAP or IFRS
and to file the financial statements content in XBRL format beginning with 2009.
Due to SEC’s XBRL adoption and to its fast widespread over the world, we
considered that a research on XBRL is needed. The purpose of this article is to review
the current state of academic research on the XBRL topic between 1998 and 2010,
after 13 year of the communication language’s life.
The discussion focuses on two databases: ScienceDirect and Springerlink database for
scientific Journals, identifying the trends and researchers actively contributions to this
development. Another goal is to assess XBRL capabilities and its future.
The ScienceDirect database search has been motivated by the possibility to access
more than 1,200 of the most commonly-used academic journals, searchable back to
1967 and covering subjects as diverse as the physical and social sciences to business
and management. Furthermore, ScienceDirect's website is comprehensive and easy to
use. The user can perform general topic, author, or title searches among all available
documents, or narrow the search to a specific subject or year (Beth, 2009).
With a platform that offers over 2200 journals, Springerlink database was considered
as the second choice for the XBRL literature review. Among the research domains are
included all the ones related to our topic: economic, informatics and engineering.
Including articles from 1996, the implemented system reduces the search time, being
more efficient for research developments (www.springer.com). The platform also
includes numerous book chapters, but giving the fact that our review was focused just
on article search, the book reviews were excluded from the start. However, the search
has a disadvantage: the search is performed just in the title, abstract, tables of contents
and not in the whole paper as in the case of ScienceDirect.
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