Return to: main PROME internet licence page.

Our aim is to arrive at a pricing which will not bar any institution with reasonable resources and reasonable needs from access to PROME, while returning enough revenue for us to be able to maintain and continue development on the site. We believe the low price of the CD-ROM for individual scholars caters well for their needs, and leaves us free to negotiate appropriate prices for institutions.

We have tried to find instances of analogous publications (rather difficult, as subscription access publishers tend to be rather secretive about their pricing structure). There seem to be two models of charging:

• Continuing annual subscription
• 'Upfront, outright perpetual license purchase', with or without a continuing maintenance fee. The perpetual license fee tends to be much higher than the continuing annual subscription fee, with the annual fee set much lower

The second model is attractive to institutions which find it easier to make one-off capital purchases. It is also suitable to institutions with the ability to mount and maintain the publication on their own servers. There seems no reason why we should not offer a choice: institutions may choose which of the two suits them.

Concerning price: we found three collections analogous to the Parliament Rolls in scope, audience and content. These are:

• The Middle English Compendium: the centrepiece of this is the Middle English Dictionary online. Annual subscription only, from $525 to $750 US.
• The Intelex corporation 'past masters' series. For web access: upfront purchase, ranging from $200 (e.g. a single volume of Jane Austen letters) to $3000 US (the collected Yeats letters); plus annual web server access fee, ranging from $200 to $3000 US pa. (Intelex also sells CD-ROMs to individual scholars at prices around 20% of the up-front web access fee).
• The Electronic Imprint of the University of Virginia Press. Web access upfront purchase only, ranging from $195 to $495 US, and a maintenance fee of $50. With substantial grant support, this group has published only one collection so far, the Dolly Madison letters.

We are also seeking to make the purchase process straightforward, without unnecessary legal verbiage. We provide a separate "Terms and Conditions" document giving fuller details of the license agreement. Comments on this, pointers to other instructive publications, and reactions are very welcome: please send these to Peter Robinson, [email protected].

Last revised: 10 July 2005