Our Rationale

Today, with access to ACS Journals established in over 80 countries and more than 100 consortia agreements in place, our business has transformed itself from a reliance on print-based subscriptions to a model predominantly based on electronic licensing with print as an ancillary component. In speaking with our customers over the past several years, we have identified issues related to basing our licensing fees on historical print expenditure.

1. Our institutional customers in North America have expressed dissatisfaction with being held to duplicate print copies
2. We lacked a basis for pricing new journals and customers with no print history
3. We needed new approach that would allow us to keep pace with editorial initiatives

Several publishers have introduced tier-based models (AIP, APS, and Project Muse) based on objective criteria such as FTEs, Carnegie Classifications, and usage. We have examined them carefully throughout our two-year process.

Our Story

ACS Journals are the world's leading publications in the chemical and related sciences. Our peer-reviewed journals rank #1 in citations and/or ISI® Impact Factor in the seven ISI® core chemistry categories, as well as seven additional ISI® categories ranging from agriculture to polymer science and the new category of nanoscience & nanotechnology. ACS journals exceeded 1.13 million total citations in 2005, an increase of 13% over 2004.

Our price per article and price per page are consistently below the competition, and we take great pride in delivering high quality content at prices well below our competition. We have incorporated value-based metrics into our new pricing plans by examining each journal's usage, number of articles published, and impact factor. This forms the basis of journal-by-journal pricing.