The Hands-on Lab offers practical insights and an open exchange for publication cost managers. The focus is on the effective processing of publication fees in scientific institutions as a contribution to the sustainable establishment of an information budget. We invite you to look over each other's shoulders as we demonstrate individual workflows and meet collective challenges. We all share the overarching goal of optimizing structures and making structural adjustments in order to enable central cost monitoring in support of the OA transformation and to come closer to the conceptual implementation of an information budget. Scientific publishing and the associated costs are a complex endeavor: In the jungle of cost models, publishing agreements and terminology, we will jointly examine concrete case studies based on invoices. Participants are invited to contribute ideas, arguments, everyday reports, sample invoices or similar materials. While sifting through heterogeneous internal processes, we will come across homogeneous problems and questions. Topics such as internal communication, the cost management department, terminologies, cost splitting, currency conversions, data transfers to funding bodies or OpenAPC are just some of the aspects that can be addressed in order to learn from each other and develop best practices. The experience of the openCost project will also be incorporated into the hands-on lab. Using the repositories of DESY and the University of Regensburg, practical exercises can be carried out and workflows from invoice receipt and documentation in a cost module to invoice payment can be simulated using centralized processes.
Lang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.