In 2005, Alan Sangster, looking for a new challenge, widened his career focus to include accounting history, which at that time, was considered a vibrant and high quality field in which to work. At all stages of his career since his first academic appointment, his promotion, salary rises, and appointments had all been obtained largely on the basis of the quality of his research. Sangster discovered that despite having 12 refereed publications and a book on ERP systems implementation published, he was omitted from a list of possible and probable entrants to the UK's 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise, designed to assess the quality of research across all UK universities. The reason for that omission was that none of the outlets for his research was rated above two in the "ABS Journal Quality Guide" ("ABS Guide"). The reason why this was the case was that his accounting history and accounting education papers were all published in specialist journals in those fields, none of which is deemed to be above a two in the "ABS Guide", and that his book was "irrelevant" as books are not included in the "ABS Guide". Sangster argues that the "ABS Guide" is divisive, biased, and quite clearly fallible, particularly with respect to journals specializing in accounting education and accounting history, never mind all the outlets it ignores because it does not recognize their existence.