Three Questions for Bernhard Mittermaier

What's the most exciting part of your job?

Contract negotiations with publishers – ranging from the institutional level to consortium agreements for the Helmholtz Association, all the way up to the DEAL agreements at the national level. I wouldn’t want to have missed out on helping organize the boycott of Elsevier during the DEAL negotiations and ultimately persuading a corporation worth billions to back down. However, it’s no longer just about access to journals, “open access” publishing, and the price to be paid for it. Issues such as data tracking, the use of texts for AI, and the transformation of the entire publishing industry toward open access now also play an important role. Getting up to speed on these topics is both a challenge and a pleasure.

If money and time weren't an issue, what would your next project be?

I would develop an AI system based on full-text scientific articles. Commercially available systems either rely solely on metadata and abstracts or, in addition to “open access” texts, include only the full texts from individual publishers. Neither approach is sufficient. The basic architecture is already defined – it just needs to be implemented

Who would you like to have dinner with, and what would you talk about?

Barack Obama. I consider him a very inspiring figure, extremely likable, and a person of integrity. I would talk with him about how we can limit the negative consequences for research resulting from the policies of the current US administration – and implement positive strategies to counter them.