Subscriptions sustain the editorial work that keeps the public roster open. The annual transfer keeps administrative overhead light and keeps reader payment details with the reader's bank rather than with the watch. We do not auto-renew under any circumstances.
€16/year
For the curious museum-goer or the student following the loan-exhibition beat.
€58/year
For working journalists, freelance writers and editorial researchers on the cultural-property beat.
€165/year
For museum boards, university research departments, embassy cultural offices and government ministries.
Once a subscription is placed through the contact form, Salem Abdelhamid confirms within two working days with the subscription identifier, the bank-transfer instructions (account at Banque du Caire, Port Said branch) or PayPal option, and the welcome email. The subscription becomes active when the payment clears. The monthly bulletin arrives on the first Sunday of every month from that point. Three weeks before the end of the year, Salem sends a single courtesy reminder. There is no automatic renewal. There is no win-back campaign. There is no marketing follow-up after a lapsed subscription.
Three formal services are available beyond the subscription tiers. Specific loan certificate at ninety euros per certificate (seventy-two for Newsroom subscribers, fifty-four for Institutional subscribers), completed within five working days, a written document with all source-stream citations for a specific loan. Custom roster extract by quotation, typically two hundred to four hundred euros depending on scope, completed within ten to fifteen working days, a filtered database extract in CSV or JSON for a specific receiving country, time window, lender museum or artefact type. Editorial consultation at one hundred and forty euros per hour, a written consultation with the appropriate editor on a specific loan-related question. These services support journalism, museum-board decision-making and academic research; the fees cover the editor time and are reviewed annually.
Annual bank transfer in euros to the cooperative's account at Banque du Caire, Port Said branch, or by PayPal at the subscriber's preference. Institutional subscribers may pay by SWIFT transfer. The bank and IBAN details are confirmed on the order email — we never send them unsolicited. A subscription becomes effective the day the payment clears. The cooperative does not retain payment instruments and does not auto-renew.
No. The active roster, the recent-returns log, the dispute-watch, the lender-museums list, the registrar's glossary and the pre-2014 archive are all free to read without a subscription. The subscription pays for the monthly bulletin, the quarterly dispute-watch update bulletin, the editorial consultation time and the formal data services. The editorial position is that the underlying data must remain open.
Because monthly billing requires the retention of payment instruments, which the cooperative has deliberately chosen not to do. Annual transfer keeps administrative work tractable for our small team and keeps reader payment data with the reader's bank. Salem processes annual transfers manually; the workload is sustainable at the current subscriber level.
Yes. PhD and Masters students may subscribe at the Reader tier for €8 (half price) on production of a current student identifier number. Mark "student" in the contact form; we ask for the identifier, no document upload required.
Yes, at a custom price. Write to the desk with the proposed reader count; we will quote within five working days. Three universities currently hold extended licences ranging from sixteen to twenty-eight named readers.
The bulletin is digital only. The optional Institutional printed annual digest is the only printed output — three hundred and twenty pages consolidating the year's monthly bulletins, the quarterly dispute-watch updates, the corrections log and the transparency note.
Yes. Mark topic "Gift subscription" on the contact form with the recipient's name, address and the date the welcome should go out. We hold the gift until the requested date and send the welcome under your name unless you ask us not to.
Write to Salem; he refunds the un-elapsed months pro rata to the nearest whole month, by reverse transfer or PayPal at your preference, within ten working days. Bulletin and quarterly access ends on the cancellation date.
The watch is a digital publication supplied from Egypt. We do not charge EU VAT at point of sale and are not registered for EU VAT collection. Egyptian VAT is included in the displayed price. Readers in jurisdictions levying a local import tax on digital subscriptions are responsible for that local tax.
The Reader tier has been €16 since January 2022 (€12 before that, raised once in eleven years). The Newsroom tier has been €58 since launch in 2017. The Institutional tier was added in 2019 at €165 and has not changed. We do not raise prices for existing subscribers within their paid year.
For the curious or sceptical subscriber, the watch publishes an annual breakdown of how subscription revenue is allocated. Approximately fifty-five percent goes to editor salaries (the four editors and the administrator); seventeen percent to technology infrastructure (the encrypted servers in Port Said and Cairo, the mail-server contract, the database hosting); thirteen percent to source-data acquisition (printed copies of the EAA register, archive subscriptions to specialist journals used by the editors, the postal collection of the lender-museum annual reports); ten percent to the Port Said office's running costs (rent, electricity, the air-conditioning that struggles in August); and five percent to occasional travel costs when an editor visits a receiving museum or attends a relevant conference. The breakdown is published in detail in the December transparency note each year.
Subscription questions through the contact form. Reader and data-service questions through the same form with the appropriate topic mark.