Digital publishing and open access policies are changing the face of academic publishing, and many of the trends that develop here are likely to make their way into the larger publishing market. That's what made news that broke earlier this year so striking: a leaked memo suggested that the American Chemical Society's publishing wing was almost entirely abandoning print and would focus instead on digital publishing. Since then, however, the ACS said that it will continue printing "condensed" versions of its journals for the time being. To find out how this organization is approaching publishing in the digital age, we spoke with Brandon Nordin, its VP of marketing, Web strategy, and innovation.

Nordin pointed out that the ACS has a somewhat different mandate from that of a for-profit publishing house. "Our charter is to help advance the scientific record, and advance science itself," Nordin said. That involves a significant amount of publishing—"In that role, we publish 34-plus journals, and have a century of publishing heritage"—but the focus is primarily on serving the academic community.

ACS made a move that most other publishers have been loathe to do: it unbundled print and online subscriptions. "Libraries were no longer bound to take the print copy if they only wanted the online," Nordin said. "Three or four years ago that was a very novel thing; I think more and more people are looking at it now."

That move probably allowed ACS a clearer view of trends in publishing. Nordin related how, a decade ago, both individual and institutional subscribers had to be enticed into accepting digital content. Now, many publishers are looking for ways to protect their investments in print in the face of increasing demands for digital.

Once given an either-or choice of print or digital, ACS subscribers made their preference clear. "We saw the purchasing market, starting with the institutional libraries, canceling print to such an extent that, when we got through the last renewal season, it was obvious that many of our journals have fallen below the threshold where you could practically consider printing them as a logical choice, much less an economic choice," Nordin said. "Some journals are printed twice a week, they're hundreds of pages, they include four-color graphics. The economics of print no longer worked."

Still, some subscribers wanted to retain print, which still works well as "a browsing, serendipity format." (Ironically, Nordin said, "they find the articles they want to focus on, and then go and print them off a computer.")

"We did not abandon print. We said, 'We need to find a way to service the remaining print volume that's out there,'" he added. The solution that ACS came up with was to use two-up printing, where each physical page contains two pages of text. Graduate students were already printing digital articles out this way, but the idea of doing it to whole journals came from someone in the print production group, who pointed out that the software they used could handle two-up printing without modification.

A temporary reprieve?

Although print wasn't abandoned this time around, Nordin said that ACS would continue to track the expectations of its subscribers, and he would be surprised if things didn't change dramatically when the next round of subscription renewals takes place. Institutional libraries are a major part of ACS's subscriber base, and they've been financially hammered in the past year; private universities have seen their endowments plunge, while public institutions have been victims of shrinking state budgets.

Nordin specifically pointed to a statement released by the International Coalition Of Library Consortia, which says that libraries "expect significant and widespread cuts in budget levels... with real and permanent reductions to base budgets." The statement calls for flexible pricing and creative solutions that let subscribers trade features for price. Given the current environment, print might well be considered a feature.

Even if print survives the next subscription renewal process, it's clear that Nordin doesn't think it can continue indefinitely. ACS's experience has been that, given the choice, enough of its readers prefer digital that print becomes hard to maintain.

"Once you start printing less than 1,000 of anything, you really have to question your business model," Nordin said.

The options for making print work better are also unpalatable; "No one wanted to give up color—nobody wanted to dial the clock back—and nobody wanted to add author charges for color.

"Obviously, we're somewhere on the road to pure digital," Nordin concluded. Still, even with an insider's view, he was hesitant to predict the trajectory of the transition. "We really don't know where [we are on that road], and we're waiting to be guided by our customers."