#OAWeek2026: „The Cost of Knowledge“ – Open Office Hours on Friday

For several years now, the TU Hamburg University Library has been offering an open virtual consultation hour on Open Access every Friday. Covering topics ranging from basic questions about publisher agreements and funding opportunities to secondary publication and Creative Commons licenses, the consultation hour is open to anyone at TU Hamburg who is interested.

As part of Open Access Week 2026, we cordially invite you to stop by our Zoom room with any questions you may have.

Start a conversation about “The Cost of Knowledge”

Under the theme “The Cost of Knowledge,” this week we’re exploring the question of what knowledge actually costs and who bears those costs.

It’s not just about money. In our posts for Open Access Week, we explore “The Cost of Knowledge” from various perspectives. For example, we look at how much time, effort, and infrastructure go into open educational resources and what actually lies behind a list of academic search results. We also discuss PLACEHOLDER …

Specifically, costs are also involved in scholarly publishing.

How much does Open Access cost at the Technical University of Hamburg?

Through the Open Access Publication Fund, TU Hamburg supports researchers in financing open access publications. We make it transparent which articles the fund has supported. The funded publications can be viewed, among other places, on our service pages as well as through a Zotero collection.

Publication costs are also made transparent. The University Library processes the APCs for the Technical University of Hamburg and reports them to OpenAPC, where interested parties can publicly view and analyze the data.

Cost transparency goes beyond simply tracking publication costs. In the University Library’s annual reports, we regularly report on developments in the areas of open access and scholarly publishing. To this end, we are now establishing an information budget that will allow us to track the costs of information services, publications, and infrastructure more systematically and make them transparent.

The question “What does knowledge cost?” raises many specific questions: Who funds an open-access publication? Which costs does the library cover? Which publishing agreements are available to TUHH members? How do we track publication costs? And which open infrastructures do we fund jointly?

We’d be happy to discuss these and other topics with you during our office hours.

What Can You Expect During Your Appointment?

During our open Zoom consultation hours, you can discuss your questions directly with the Open Access team. We set aside about half an hour for this every Friday. Unlike consultations via email or phone, during a live conversation we can look at your screen or our online resources together, review documents, or research publication options.

Whether it’s publication funding, the right to republish, Creative Commons licenses, publishing agreements, or any other question related to Open Access: We’ll address your specific concerns on a case-by-case basis.