One of the best protected secrets of the Dutch accounting community is that the Netherlands is among the best European countries when it comes to accounting research and that Dutch universities also perform excellent when making worldwide comparisons. The current situation is the result of the hard work of many people at the different Dutch universities during the last three decades. Despite the fact that accounting research flourishes in the Netherlands and despite the geographic concentration of the different universities, initiatives to bring accounting researchers together were lacking. The Dutch Accounting Research Conference (DARC) aims at filling this gap.