Bad Chemistry

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 2001 by Joe Hagan

SCIENCES AMBITIOUS WEB PLANS HERALDED A NEW ERA FOR THE INFLUENTIAL NONPROFIT. BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ITS PUBLIC SERVICE MANDATE RAN SMACK INTO ITS BOTTOM LINE. A TALE OF POLITICS, TECHNOLOGY AND MISSION CREEP.

When the weekly journal Science publishes a groundbreaking study on something like the self-assembly of carbon-based nanotubes, readers--whether academic luminaries like natural historian Stephen Jay Gould or chemistry under-grads who've barely broken in their lab coats--pay rapt attention. So do the media, who take their cues for science coverage from the magazine. In the case of those funky nanotubes, it was The New York Times that recently made front-page news of how these atomic filaments might be used to miniaturize computer chips.

Among researchers jockeying for prime positions in universities and corporations, a paper published in Science means a gold-plated resume. And it's been happening this way, more or less, since Thomas Edison launched the journal in 1880.

But after a century of promoting scientific progress, Science now appears threatened by the latest and greatest innovation of the age: The Internet. While it's a familiar story in publishing--the conundrum of offering online content without undermining print circulation--it cuts directly to the heart of Science's split identity as both a nonprofit outfit with a mission to be a "forum for important ideas related to the advancement of science," and a highly lucrative publisher.

Over the last five years, Science has waged an ongoing battle to plug a circulation drain that traces its origins to the launch of Science Online in 1996. Three years ago, it began charging Web readers to view its 50/50 mix of science journalism and peer-reviewed research, while also issuing multiple-user site licenses to big institutions. The move helped plug the revenue leak--only to be attacked last year by a vocal faction of the science community that is boycotting the magazine for placing publishing profits from Web access over its nonprofit mandate to serve the science world at large with accessible data.

Although he declined to speak to FOLIO:, editor in chief Donald Kennedy, an environmental science professor at Stanford, summed up the situation in a

recent letter to subscribers: "In a world in which electronic and print publications coexist, our financial picture is more complex and riskier. We have to balance the need for revenue from Science in print against the need to offer scientists everywhere the advantages that the Internet can provide."

Science is the revenue-generating arm of the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which funds public policy, a handful of educational programs and a career-mentoring Web site. A membership to the AAAS gets you a subscription to Science. For a nonprofit, the AAAS has done exceptionally well: In 1996, it built a suitably austere and commanding headquarters, a $70 million edifice designed by I.M. Pei (who also designed Le Grand Louvre in Paris) located in a tony section of Washington, D.C.

In 1999, the last year for which figures are publicly available, the Association's income totaled $54 million, $34 million of which came from the magazine. Advertising brought in $28 million of that, gleaned primarily from the biotechnology companies. What Internet advertisers were to the New Economy magazines, genomic-research-fueled biotech outfits have been to science journals. (Sample ad copy: "Do Your E. Coli Cells Have Mammalian Envy?") And Science's ad base is relatively safe in this down economy, although the biotech boom has gone bust before. According to Brett Campayno, vice president of Boston-based ad agency, Mycoff Advertising, despite Science's robust ad rates, advertisers like her client, New England BioLabs, are essentially captive. "[Science] could raise its prices to $10,000 [from $7,500 today], and people would balk," she says. "But they would still advertise there."

But according to three sources familiar with goings-on at the AAAS, tension began mounting at the magazine last summer when its circulation dropped below 150,000. Its latest audit statement reveals two distressing trends: For the six months ending December 2000, paid qualified circulation totaled 148,863, according to BPA International, a sizable until decline from 1996 when the average weekly circulation topped 160,000; meanwhile, the amount it receives per subscription has dropped by 7 percent, to $84.92 a year, over the three years BPA has published the information. (Science also removed its ratebase guarantee to advertisers in late 1999.)

"I think they're worried," says Chuck Munson, a former Webmaster for the AAAS office of membership and meetings, who departed amicably in March after a department restructuring. "They saw the writing on the wall, long term, and that's why they're trying a variety of new things. They're selling a lot of biotech ads, but you lose a thousand members at $100 a pop--that's a lot of money."