FT extends multi-platform licences for academic institutions

Currently 115 academic institutions have purchased an FT licence and have unlimited access to up-to-date Financial Times journalism through FT.com for their students and faculty.

The purpose of the multi-platform licence is to ensure that customers of the Financial Times only pay once for unlimited access to FT journalism, irrespective of the platform being used for access. The new licence is being announced a year in advance in order to give customers and third parties time to make arrangements.

Caspar de Bono (pictured), FT Managing Director B2B, said: “By working with our academic customers, the FT created an annotation sharing tool called FT Newslines. This service launched in October 2011 and 40 business schools worldwide are already sharing their insights on emerging global events via the service. We would like to build on the direct relationship we have with our academic customers, offering them the benefits of multi-platform rights and encouraging further innovation by creating a more flexible approach to licensing. The FT licence provides a means of accessing the FT’s valuable content, across multiple platforms, for one price.”

With an FT licence, universities and schools only pay for users who make frequent use of the FT and the cost per reader decreases as more seats are purchased. The cost of the licence will be the same irrespective of the channel it is accessed from.

Academic users of third party news aggregation services without an FT licence can currently access FT content 24 hours post publication. From 1 August 2013, these users will be able to access FT content that is 30 days post publication and will need to purchase a licence for anything more recent via these channels. Further information can be found at education.ft.com

Individuals can continue to register to use FT.com and read eight articles a month for free. The annual subscription price of an FT education licence is £109, €129 or $129 per reader (ex VAT) and is based on the number of readers who require frequent use of the FT. The retail price for an FT.com individual subscription is currently £353/€416/$446 per year.