Reader subscriptions sustain the editorial work that keeps the quarterly editions in print and freely citable. The annual transfer keeps administrative overhead light and keeps payment details with the reader's bank rather than with us. We do not auto-renew under any circumstances.
€24 / year
For the individual reader following the field, the student starting paleographic work, the literary scholar interested in adjacent material.
€78 / year
For working paleographers, classicists and historians using the editions in their own scholarly work.
€210 / year
For university paleography seminars, museum codicology departments and research institute libraries.
Once a subscription is placed through the contact form, Salma Iskander confirms within three working days with the subscription identifier, the bank-transfer instructions (account at the Commercial International Bank, Aswan branch) or PayPal option, and the welcome email. The subscription becomes active the day the payment clears. The quarterly issue arrives by email PDF on the first Friday of the publication month (March, June, September, December); Researcher and Institutional subscribers receive the printed issue by post within ten working days of the email release. Three weeks before the end of the subscription year, Salma sends a single courtesy reminder.
External commissioned readings — typically from university museums asking for a paleographic reading of material in their own collection that does not fall under one of the four working corpora — are available as a separate paid service. The standard fee is three hundred euros for a single item or eight hundred euros for a group of up to six items. Researcher subscribers receive a twenty percent discount; Institutional subscribers receive a forty percent discount. The commission covers the four-pass edition cycle and includes the published transcription in the next quarterly issue with the institution's consent.
For the curious subscriber, the journal publishes an annual breakdown. Approximately fifty-three percent goes to editor salaries (the five editors and the administrator); fifteen percent to the photographic and EpiDoc TEI-XML infrastructure; twelve percent to travel between Aswan and the institutional excavation houses (the editors visit Elephantine weekly, Tebtunis and Wadi al-Natrun quarterly, Abu Sir el-Meleq twice a year); ten percent to the Aswan office's running costs; six percent to printing and postage for the printed issues; and four percent to the annual external audit and small consultancy work. The breakdown is published in detail in the December transparency note each year.
No. The published transcriptions, the paleographic apparatus, the corrections log and the methodology document are freely accessible without a subscription. The TEI-XML file pack and the printed issue are subscriber-only; the editorial-consultation time and the discounted commissioned-reading fee are subscriber benefits. The editorial position is that the readings themselves must remain in the public scholarly record.
Because monthly billing requires the retention of payment instruments. The cooperative has chosen not to retain them. Annual transfer keeps administrative work tractable for the small team.
Yes. PhD and Masters students in paleography, classical studies, Coptic Studies, Egyptology or related fields may subscribe at the Reader tier for €12 (half price) on production of a current student identifier. Mark "student" in the contact form.
Yes, at a custom price. Four institutions hold extended licences: Heidelberg University paleography programme at twenty-eight readers, Berkeley Tebtunis archive office at sixteen readers, the American University in Cairo Coptic Studies programme at twenty readers, and the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology library at fourteen readers.
Yes — the quarterly issue is printed in a run of seven hundred copies and posted to all Researcher and Institutional subscribers. The optional Institutional printed annual digest is a separate consolidated volume at €34 plus postage. The Reader tier is digital only.
Yes. Mark "Gift subscription" with the recipient's name, postal or email address, and the welcome date.
Salma refunds pro rata to the nearest whole quarter (not month, because the issue cadence is quarterly) within ten working days.
The journal is a digital and printed publication supplied from Egypt. We do not charge EU VAT at point of sale; the Egyptian VAT is included in the displayed price. Postal-supplied printed issues are dispatched DDU; the receiving institution is responsible for any local import VAT or duty.
The Reader tier has been €24 since 2022 (€18 before that). The Researcher tier has been €78 since launch in 2018. The Institutional tier was added in 2019 at €210 and has not changed.
For the curious subscriber, the journal publishes an annual breakdown. Approximately fifty-three percent goes to editor salaries (the five editors and the administrator); fifteen percent to the photographic and EpiDoc TEI-XML infrastructure; twelve percent to travel between Aswan and the institutional excavation houses (the editors visit Elephantine weekly, Tebtunis and Wadi al-Natrun quarterly, Abu Sir el-Meleq twice a year); ten percent to the Aswan office's running costs; six percent to printing and postage for the printed issues; and four percent to the annual external audit and small consultancy work. The breakdown is published in detail in the December transparency note each year.
Since 2017 the journal has declined five sponsorship approaches and three larger funding proposals. The sponsorship refusals were all from commercial antiquities-trade entities; we treat the refusal record as the practical demonstration of the journal's editorial-independence stance. The three funding proposals declined came from a private-collection consortium proposing to fund the journal's expansion to private-collection material (we declined because of the provenance considerations), from a university press proposing to absorb the journal into its imprint structure (we declined because the absorption would have compromised our editorial independence from the academic-publication queue), and from a digital-classics startup proposing to fund the corpus-search platform in exchange for licensing terms we found incompatible with our Creative Commons commitment.
Subscription questions through the contact form. Commissioned-reading enquiries through the same form with the appropriate topic.