I work in the Center for Digital Scholarship as a Digital Scholarship Assistant. In my role I created a quiz for Open Access Week The quiz covered the theme the “Cost of Knowledge” and was modeled after the University of Virginia’s LibWizard tutorial, ‘What Costs More?”
When I began this task, it made me wonder if my understanding of Open Access was at the basic level. I wondered, what really was the cost of knowledge? At first, I had no idea. I started researching this by looking at examples from other libraries’ LibGuides. It quickly became apparent to me that the cost of knowledge is not cheap. Specifically looking at academic libraries, the cost of knowledge is about the amount of money academic libraries spend to provide access to information to students, faculty, staff, and other library patrons. As subscription costs to journal articles, E-books, and more continue to rise, libraries continue to foot the bills even though budgets are often reduced each year. On top of libraries paying large prices to provide access to subscription databases and more, authors tend to feel a similar pain with the rising costs of Article Processes Charges (APCs). I learned that the cost of knowledge involves more than library budgets, it includes rising subscription prices, publication fees paid by researchers, and other hidden costs associated with crating, sharing and accessing scholarly information. As I concluded my initial research, I had even more questions I wanted to investigate, such as: who are the ones that benefit the most from charging large fees to produce and share knowledge? Was it the publishers or large AI tech companies? What does this mean for your average knowledge seeker?
Having gone through the process of finding out more about the costs associated with knowledge sharing, I looked towards my own institution to help me grapple with my curiosity on how academic libraries dealt with raising costs. As I set out on this journey, I explored the library’s history with journal subscriptions and how rising costs affect the University Library’s budget. This process really helped me to discover what information I wanted to highlight within the quiz I created.
The timing felt especially fitting since I had enrolled in a graduate level course in Library and Information Science master’s program at IU Indy on Scholarly Communications this fall. To my surprise, many of the same topics I encountered while creating the quiz appeared in class discussions, like the serials crisis and the problem of the rising costs of journal subscriptions. As the class continued, I was presented with more information that reflected the cost of knowledge, so I did what was prudent and incorporated it into the quiz.
What began as a task assigned to me in my role at the University library ultimately turned into an opportunity to discover more about the theme of this year’s Open Access Week. Even though Open Access Week 2026 is over, the theme for this year is still prevalent. I invite you to try out the quiz I created to see how much you know about the “Cost of Knowledge” and how it applies to costs spent at IU Indianapolis.
Get started on the quiz here.