Arctos has a modest annual operating cost that is shared by members of the Arctos consortium. This covers the general operating expenses:
- Support for the Arctos Programmers (100% time). The Arctos Database Administrator (25% time) is supported through an agreement between the Berkeley Natural History Museums and Berkeley IT, University of California Berkeley.
- Support for the Data Migration Coordinator
- Miscellaneous expenses, including hardware or software upgrades, and domain and web hosting fees.
- Arctos hosting at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), including all hardware, backup, and security needs.
- A base share of the Arctos TACC Project Allocation for digital media storage (currently set at 1 TB and subject to change dependent on the percentage of total storage currently in use). For more information please see the Arctos TACC Project Allocation Digital Media Policy.
The annual financial contribution by Arctos members includes a subscription fee of $110, a per record fee that is tiered by the number of object records, and an administration fee. These will increase by 10% until 2026 as part of a modest adjustment over the next three years. Fees are paid to the Arctos fiscal sponsor Community Initiatives.
The per record fee is applied to collections with more than 10,000 records effective August 15, 2024 through August 15, 2025:
| # Records – From | # Records – To | Per Record Fee |
|---|---|---|
| 10,001 | 100,000 | $0.033 |
| 100,001 | 500,000 | $0.0275 |
| 500,001 | 1,000,000 | $0.022 |
| 1,000,001 | 1,500,000 | $0.0165 |
| 1,500,001 | $0.011 |
This online Excel Calculator will estimate the potential annual financial contribution for a collection. (updated August 12, 2024)
The fee schedule is subject to change as approved by the Arctos Advisory Committee
Contributing to New Arctos Developments
Arctos is a dynamic and comprehensive informatics tool that is continually adding new features for querying, managing, and integrating diverse kinds of collections-related data, ranging from more traditional kinds of museum records to genomic and isotopic data generated from biological records. Requests for major new developments in Arctos (major enhancements to existing features, completely innovative features) require external funding. Such developments are typically driven by grant proposals submitted by individual or multiple participating institutions that have consulted with the Arctos Working Group officers. To ensure appropriate development, institutions that submit proposals with funding for new Arctos developments must contact the Chair of the Arctos Advisory Board and the Arctos Director. The Director will be able to sign letters of support for NSF grants.