Higher education subscription

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.

Jisc subscription provides your institution with full access to our catalogue of services for higher education.

  • Research and development will continue to be fully funded by the funding bodies
  • The funding bodies will also provide significant and additional capital investment.

We will contact your institution directly in the spring each year to outline its exact contribution, which is based on student numbers and income. We appreciate you need these costs to assist your budget planning and will aim to get them to you as soon as possible.

How we calculate 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.

Institutional charge calculation
Creative Commons attribution information
How institutional contributions are calculated. The model is the same in all parts of the UK. England is only used here for illustrative purposes
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How HE institution contributions differ by country

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.  

HE institutions contribute the remainder, based on the formula detailed above. 

Though contributions differ by country - the included services are the same for all HE members.

Invoicing and expected costs

Invoicing

We will invoice HEIs for their subscription fee in August of each year.

Invoices for optional services (those outside of the Jisc subscription)

Some optional services are VAT exempt for members of the VAT-exempt cost sharing group. For those services where we have to charge VAT - you will be invoiced by a Jisc subsidiary company. In these circumstances you may receive an invoice from Jisc Services Limited.

My institution needs to budget for the costs of Jisc's optional services during the next financial year. Can the current charges excluding VAT be taken as a reasonable indicator of the charges for the subsequent year?

In general we hope that the future base cost of optional chargeable services will be reasonably similar to current levels.  However, many of the Jisc Group's services (and particularly for digital content delivered by Jisc Collections) are procured from external third party suppliers - so if the Jisc Group itself receives higher input costs from external suppliers we will need to pass on these increased costs

Manage your subscription

If you are responsible for managing your organisation’s Jisc membership, you can request a subscription and services manager account to see your subscription details and the services you use.