Higher education subscription
Your Jisc membership gives you access to trusted advice, products and services, communities and events.
For every £1 our members invest in us, they receive a return of more than £3 just in terms of savings (Frontier Economics, The economic benefits of Jisc, 2023). From connectivity to cyber security, negotiations and licensing deals to data and digital transformation, we generate high-value benefits for the higher education sector – and the UK economy as a whole.
More information about the cost-saving benefits of a Jisc membership is available on our savings and value page. This includes a series of independently-conducted value studies featuring a variety of higher education members
Your Jisc subscription also provides your college with full access to our catalogue of services for higher education.
Services included as part of your core Jisc membership
Cyber security
The security threat landscape is always evolving, but so are we. As the sector’s trusted security partner and provider of the UK’s national research and education network (NREN), we make it our business to stay abreast of current challenges and share intelligence and expert advice with our members.
With key services included as part of your secure Janet connection such as foundation DDoS mitigation, cyber threat intelligence and advanced protection to prevent users accessing malicious sites and phishing, we help you to protect your organisation together with the rest of the sector.
As a member, you’ll also have access to our cyber security community, a trusted group providing the latest threat intel, workshops and an opportunity to share experiences securely with peers.
Read more about how we can help you enhance your cyber security.
Our work to prevent breaches saves the education sector £40m a year in DDoS and ransomware attack incident costs. (The economic benefits of Jisc, 2023)
Connectivity
We understand that your network connection is fundamental to everything you do. With our world-class Janet Network, rest assured that your users will be reliably and securely connected.
The Janet Network is purpose-built for the UK’s research and education community, and offers the bandwidth and resilience you need, packaged with services to help you get connected and stay connected.
Find out more about connectivity.
Negotiations and licensing
Jisc’s negotiation and licensing strategic groups set the direction of negotiations and ensure that our member’s requirements are heard. Working in partnership with these groups enables us to negotiate affordable agreements to save you time and money.
We negotiate with publishers and vendors at a national level to license and procure affordable digital content and software for the UK education and research community.
Our successfully negotiated open access agreement with Springer Nature saved the sector £2m.
Advice and guidance
As a Jisc member, we’ll provide you with trusted advice and impactful support – focused around the specific challenges you face. Whether you are looking to inform your digital planning and leadership or improve the quality of delivery of teaching and learning or business operations, we have the latest thinking to get you up to speed and practical guides and tools to inform your actions.
Our report on student perceptions of generative AI in tertiary education is just one example of the kind of topical guidance Jisc members can expect from us.
When there’s a topic or challenge that we think could be relevant to our members, we act quickly to give you the advice and guidance you need.
Events and communities
Jisc members qualify for an allocation of free tickets for our main events: Digifest, Networkshop and Security Conference, all of which provide valuable opportunities to engage, network and hear about key topics from sector-leading experts.
Our events bring together members and communities in person and online to share experiences, uncover best practice and imagine new possibilities. Over the past year our community managers have supported more than 40 communities and thousands of individuals, actively encouraging each group’s interests and their different ways of gathering and communicating.
How we are funded
The majority of our funding comes from the UK HE and FE funding bodies, with a contribution via subscription from all higher education institutions and from general FE and sixth form colleges in England. The UK HE funding bodies contribute the majority (at least 75%) of the cost required to deliver our core package of services to HE institutions. The amount that each funding body contributes differs because of the particular funding context in their country. Though contributions differ by country, the included services are the same for all HE members.
Research and development are fully funded by the funding bodies. The funding bodies will also provide significant and additional capital investment
Invoicing for your subscription
We will contact your institution directly in the spring each year to outline its exact contribution, which is based on student numbers and income. You will receive your invoice for your subscription fee in August. We appreciate you need these costs to assist your budget planning and will aim to get them to you as soon as possible.
Calculating each HE institution's contribution
The model for calculating how the charges are shared between HE institutions reflect the value of Jisc to different types of institution. The model is the same in all parts of the UK. In the example below an English institution is used for illustrative purposes only.
[ ((Income/total HE income for England) x 0.8) + ((Research income/total research income for England) x 0.1) + ((Student full-time equivalent/total student full-time equivalents in England) x 0.1) ]
x Total HE England institutional contribution
= Institutional contribution