Service Provider tariff FAQ

The UK federation has been free until now, why are you bringing in the membership fee?

Commercial membership will provide an enhanced, SLA driven entity registration and support service for commercial UK Federation Service Provider Operating Members. Many other identity federations charge for participation (at a much higher rate) including Incommon in the United States, and the AAF in Australia.

UK HE, FE, Research Institutions, Local Councils and Schools

Do we have to pay the tariff?

No, there is no charge for registering Identity Providers (IdPs) in the UK AND institutions are not charged for registering Service Providers either.

Won’t some Service Providers leave the federation and seek bi-lateral metadata exchange or non SAML methods with institutions?

We strongly encourage both the publishers and institutions not to support this approach. It will significantly increase the administrative burdens on both parties. as well as increasing the possibility of inadvertent data leakage.

Publishers and other Service Providers

Do university presses (such as OUP) have to pay the tariff.

University presses that can show a clear association with a UK HE institution are exempt (OUP, LUP, Cambridge etc).

Do non-profit societies have to pay the tariff?

Yes

Do research focused applications have to pay the tariff.

UK federation members whose Service Provider entities, in their entirety, have the Refeds Research and Scholarship attribute OR who can demonstrate they exclusively meet a Research remit may apply to Jisc for a discounted rate. For the sake of clarity, most commercial academic publishers DO NOT fall within this exemption / reduction.

We are a UK federation member but have outsourced our Service Provider registration to another UK federation member, who pays the tariff?

A member who has engaged in domain permission registration and does not have any Service Provider entities registered in their own name is not subject to the charge, however the UK federation member registering those entities is. So if Publisher X, owns domain Sciencepublishing.com and third party Y has registered that entity in the UK federation, having had a domain permission letter provided by X, Organisation Y pays the tariff.

Do Publishers with a Jisc Collections agreement, and who have an SP registered, have to pay the tariff? Yes, however publishers with small deals valued under £60K p.a in their entirety, may apply to Jisc for a discounted rate.

Could we leave the UK federation and use another entity registered in another federation?

Yes, Jisc considers UK federation membership for Service Providers to be a strong value proposition given the expert helpdesk available to members for registration and support, however the UK federation will continue to import the eduGAIN metadata aggregate without prejudice.

We have an Open Athens (a Jisc Company) managed Service Provider, do we have to pay the tariff?

Yes.

As a Software as a Service Provider, we register a large number of institutionally bespoke SP entities for the convenience of our customers, will we have to pay more?

No, a special tariff is applicable, please contact Jisc.

Other

My organization operates Service Providers on behalf of UK Student unions, do we have to pay the tariff?

Where a clear link can be made to serving core student union (local or national) democracy objectives, you will be entitled to apply for the Jisc discounted rate.