Since 2014, TAIR has been supported by subscriptions from universities, corporations, and individuals all over the world. Please see our TAIR subscriptions page for information on pricing and how to subscribe.
TAIR Corporate Sponsorship Program
TAIR's corporate sponsorship program has been discontinued. Many thanks to our corporate sponsors who helped support TAIR in 2010-2013!
TAIR Subscription FAQ
General
What is Arabidopsis thaliana?
Arabidopsis thaliana is an important reference plant for the plant kingdom. Because of its small physical size, short life cycle and small genome, it was adopted as the standard laboratory organism for the study of higher plants and its genome sequence was completed in 2000. Many fundamental research questions about plants have been studied in Arabidopsis in great detail, such as how plants grow, reproduce, sense their environment and adapt to it. Approximately 4000 new research articles on Arabidopsis are published every year.
What is TAIR? Who uses TAIR?
The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) is an online database of genetic and molecular biology data for the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. TAIR is considered an indispensable resource for thousands of researchers around the world who work with Arabidopsis. TAIR is also commonly used by plant biologists working with other plants because the amount of information available for Arabidopsis is vast compared with most other plants and the research results from Arabidopsis are often directly relevant to other plant species.
Why is TAIR requiring subscriptions now?
TAIR was funded by NSF from 1999 through 2013, but it no longer has grant funding. The staff of TAIR has organized a new nonprofit entity, Phoenix Bioinformatics, to find a sustainable business model for TAIR without losing its fundamental role as a community database.
Researchers at academic / nonprofit institutions
When will I need a subscription?
By April 1, 2014
What are my subscription options?
We offer individual, lab and institution-wide subscriptions, please see our pricing information. For an institution-wide subscription please contact your institution’s librarian as soon as possible to ensure that your library will have enough advance notice to budget funds for this purpose. Lab and personal subscriptions will be available beginning in March 2014.
What happens if I don’t subscribe?
After March 31 2014 you will still be able to access some TAIR pages. However, the gene/locus pages and many other TAIR pages and tools will not be available without a subscription, or you may be limited to only a few page views per month.
Subscribers
My institution is subscribed but my login page says I am not subscribed or I am not able to see paid content.
Mostly likely this is because you are accessing TAIR from a site other than at your home institution. If this is the case, you will need to access TAIR via the proxy system for your institution (e.g. EZ proxy). Please consult your library for information on how to adjust your browser proxy settings.
Researchers at companies
When will I need a subscription?
Companies were asked to subscribe starting on October 1, 2013. We have extended a grace period to allow more time to subscribe but will begin blocking IP addresses of companies who have not contacted us about a subscription by December 15, 2013.
What are my subscription options?
We offer individual and company-wide subscriptions, please contact us for pricing.
What happens if I don’t subscribe?
You will lose access to all TAIR pages on December 15, 2013.
Librarians
How is TAIR different from bibliographic databases like PubMed, BIOSIS, etc?
TAIR is a database of knowledge about Arabidopsis, contributed by researchers or extracted from (and linked back to) research articles by biocurators with graduate or postdoctoral training as plant biology researchers. The information is presented in a highly integrated and standardized format for efficient querying and use in large scale data analyses. Searches within TAIR are not bibliographic searches; they search the accumulated knowledge about Arabidopsis directly, with links to the articles from which the information was gathered.
How much will it cost for my institution? How can I subscribe?
Prices are available here. Please contact us for your institution’s usage level and a copy of our license agreement.
How do you track TAIR usage?
We use Google Analytics to track the number of visits to TAIR from each instititution. A visit is a series of pages accessed by one visitor. One visit can include one or more TAIR pages accessed from the same computer, and the visit ends when the visitor leaves the TAIR website or is inactive for 30 minutes or more. The total number of visits from an institution over the previous year (September 1 - August 31) is used to set the subscription price for the following year. Please contact us for the TAIR usage from your institution.
Teachers
What are my subscription options?
If you are using TAIR for classroom teaching or student assignments, please fill out this Google form to request a subscription. We will provide you with a login that can be shared with your students, with access for the duration of the course.
