Academic International Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Carnegie classifications are only assigned to US-based academic institutions, so how will you designate a tier for my university, which isn't in the US?

A: For academic customers outside the US, for which no Carnegie classifications are available, we looked at each subscriber’s usage and mapped that back to the appropriate Carnegie tier in use in the US.  We then looked at enrollment, to ensure that these assignments more accurately reflected the site’s ranking.  We then created sub-tiers based on Gross National Income (GNI) ratings from the World Bank, to better address the capacity of schools in different parts of the world to afford access.  Thus, schools in countries with more limited resources are paying similar amounts to one another.

Q: My institution is part of a consortium.  Will we still have full-text article access to the same journals we did last year?

A: We want to continue our strong relationships with consortia all over the world.  Your access will depend largely on your decisions, but we will certainly work with you and your consortium to ensure stability within the group and access to our journals.  We still have attractive incentives to offer consortia and their membership, which you should review with your consortium director and your ACS sales representative.

Q: Will my price increase if my usage increases -- will I move from one band or tier to another?

A: The ACS will review and occasionally (but not annually) adjust the sub-tiers to accurately reflect averages across the entire market segment.  Therefore, at the margins, it’s possible some sites will move to a different sub-tier. So, a site is just as likely to move down a sub-tier as up – an example of the neutrality that’s been built-in to the model.

Q: How will new journals be priced?

A: New journals will be priced at an introductory or entry level.  As article output and usage change, and once an impact factor is assigned, the price will shift up or down accordingly – the journal will be weighted just like all our others.  This will affect the prices of other journals, as of course the total cannot exceed 100%.

Q: How are your individual journal prices calculated?

A: We’ve completely de-constructed our journal pricing to make it more web-oriented.  Instead of matching print prices dollar for dollar, we’ve broken each journal down by articles published, impact factor, and usage to create weighted or relative prices within the ACS corpus.  So, the journals outputting the most articles, with the highest impact factors, and generating the most downloads, will be the most expensive journal.  And so on down the line.

Q: What do you mean by "single-bill" groups or consortia?

A: Some consortia comprised of dozens if not hundreds of schools pay their annual invoice as a group – ACS sends one invoice to the consortium, and the consortium remits one payment to ACS.  This is in contrast to “multi-pay” consortia, in which many schools may have been more loosely confederated; each site pays its own invoice and thus, may have a slightly different title profile than others in the same group.