INSIDE EOSC 09 – Sona Arasteh
Andrew Dubber
Hello and welcome to Inside EOSC, a podcast all about the inner workings of the European Open Science Cloud. I’m Andrew Dubber, I’m a professor in innovation, senior researcher at the Industry Commons Foundation, and I’m a consortium member of an EOSC project called LUMEN. And each month in this podcast, I introduce luminaries, people central to the LUMEN project and to the wider EOSC ecosystem.
Today’s guest is Sona Arasteh. She is the communications officer for the Max Weber Foundation in Bonn, Germany, policy officer for OPERAS, head of communications for the LUMEN Project, and coordinator of the EOSC Opportunity Area 6 on open scholarly communication. A lot to unpack there. Sona, thank you so much for joining.
Sona Arasteh
Thank you so much for inviting me, Andrew.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. Okay. So let’s start with, we’ll work backwards. Opportunity Area 6. First of all, what’s an opportunity area and how many are there?
Sona Arasteh
Seven. I think, so let me answer the easiest part of the question first. So I think there are seven in total by now. So each opportunity area for the EOSC is a group of experts involved in EOSC projects that serve as some kind of, well, expert guidance to actually connect across the projects, to connect expertise across the projects concerning specific topics.
And the opportunity area six, open scholarly communication, obviously has the topic open scholarly communication. And the idea behind that is, so EOSC is usually very technically oriented and open scholarly communication has a more broad view on what is relevant for scholarly communication, for publications, for the creation and dissemination and consumption of research. So the idea was to bring a more holistic point of view to that, because in the end, everything we develop in terms of technology, in terms of interoperability, also has to satisfy the needs of a broader view on what research actually does and how researchers in society interact with research.
Andrew Dubber
So just to be clear, when you say open, you mean what?
Sona Arasteh
Yeah, that is kind of a crucial point. So open can refer to open infrastructure. Open can refer to open access. In an ideal world, it would cover all of that. So for example, if we talk about peer review, we would also talk about open peer review.
So there are several things to unpack. And actually, some of that is aspect of discussion. So there are definitions for open scholarly communication, which basically means I think the broadest is to have an open infrastructure concerning everything that is scholarly communication and to have the principles of open science implemented at every stage. But of course, as you know, each stage of open science also involves discussion. So we are in an involving discussion around that.
Andrew Dubber
I heard a journal referred to yesterday as being diamond open access, which suggests that there are levels that you can attain. What marks out these levels and how far down the gemstone level does it go?
Sona Arasteh
So generally you distinguish between green, gold and diamond open access. Green open access is usually if you can publish in a repository after you’ve already published with, for example, a commercial publisher. And gold open access is usually you pay APCs, but then it’s opened for everyone to read. So you publish an article in a magazine, everyone can read it, but someone has paid author processing charges beforehand.
Andrew Dubber
Okay. Thank you for unpacking APCs because it’s a world of acronyms we live in.
Sona Arasteh
Yeah, yeah. And Diamond Open Access actually tries to take back the cost control to the community. So Diamond Open Access doesn’t involve fees for authors or readers. So that’s the idea behind that. Obviously, someone needs to pay for the whole publishing process, which is why Diamond Open Access is mostly institutional publishing.
So most Diamond Open Access journals are run by institutions. There are several business models that can be employed by commercial publishers as well, but mostly it’s institutional publishing. So the idea is that the money that is oftentimes used to pay for APCs, which oftentimes is money from the taxpayers, is rather used to enforce infrastructure that then helps publishing institutionally.
Andrew Dubber
A couple more questions, more German focused, I guess. Max Weber.
Sona Arasteh
Yes.
Andrew Dubber
Who, why, what?
Sona Arasteh
Max Weber Foundation is the biggest foundation for humanities. It’s a very complicated German word, which I have to translate accordingly.
Andrew Dubber
What’s the German word?
Sona Arasteh
Geisteswissenschaftlich, which is humanities.
Andrew Dubber
Right.
Sona Arasteh
But it’s an adjective. So it’s the biggest foundation or institute for humanities around Germany. The institutes that Max Weber Foundation has are actually not in Germany.
Andrew Dubber
So they are abroad.
Sona Arasteh
Abroad was the word I was looking for, I now realize. And I work in the head office, which is in Bonn, which coordinates all of this. We have three departments. One of these departments is research infrastructure. So I work in the research infrastructure department. But we actually have a focus on historical research throughout the world. We have institutes in Washington, India, Delhi, Rome, etc., etc. And actually, Max Weber Foundation is one of the biggest foundations in Germany.
Andrew Dubber
Interesting. Is this a kind of a soft power, kind of like the British Council or just representation abroad?
Sona Arasteh
Maybe not that heavy, but yes, to some extent, it’s a soft power thing, of course.
Andrew Dubber
Okay. You’re both a policy officer and a communication officer, depending on different contexts. What’s the relationship between those two things?
Sona Arasteh
Okay. So first of all, I have to unpack that a bit because my communication officer role is, so I have two employers, as you’ve already mentioned in the introduction. So the first employer is the Max Weber Foundation, for which I have the position of communication officer, for which I work in LUMEN.
For OPERAS, I work as a policy officer, but not necessarily in LUMEN. So I actually also work as a policy officer for the European Diamond Capacity Hub. I can see a smile on your face.
Andrew Dubber
Because it’s more complicated because the Max Weber Foundation is a member of OPERAS.
Sona Arasteh
Exactly. Yes.
Andrew Dubber
So do you want to sort of unbundle the whole thing? So you work for both organizations.
Sona Arasteh
Yes.
Andrew Dubber
But the organization that you work for as a communications officer is a member of the organization that you work for as a policy officer.
Sona Arasteh
It doesn’t actually, so my employeeship doesn’t interfere with that because the membership is on a different level from that. But it does help that the organizations obviously cooperate with each other. So it makes my day-to-day life very easy and it actually creates synergies, I think, for both of them.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Well, let’s make the question simpler. I think I understand what a communications officer does. I don’t think I understand what a policy officer does.
Sona Arasteh
It depends on the context. So my work for the European Diamond Capacity Hub mostly involves trying to come up with recommendations for how to implement Diamond Open Access on different levels. So, for example, I was involved in a DIAMAS project that developed recommendations for institutional leaders, policymakers, and sponsors and donors. That was it.
So we came up with a co-design process. We worked through that and had several feedback loops checking if these recommendations were actually implementable, if it would make sense to the specific stakeholder groups who came up with these recommendations. This would be one of the things I do as a policy officer. Another thing would obviously be that I try to keep a little bit of track of what’s happening in terms of Diamond Open Access and try to follow the newest trends and hopefully implement them in our work.
Andrew Dubber
Great. Okay. So for those who don’t know what OPERAS does, the publication side of things is really important. You want to just sort of talk about A, the acronym, because again, all these things are acronyms. EOSC is an acronym. OPERAS is an acronym. What is OPERAS? What is its function?
Sona Arasteh
So OPERAS is the infrastructure for open scholarly communication in a European research area. And the function is basically to cover these aspects of the publication, mostly of the publication process in terms of a holistic view of open scholarly communication with a specific focus on SSH.
So to give you an example, we work on open access a lot. So that’s one of the major things. We work on research assessment. We work on trainings. And basically what we are trying to do through our work is to cover the whole cycle of research. So from the idea to the output to the dissemination and to cover all of that, because most organizations, not all of them, obviously, but most organizations cover one aspect of it and specialize on it. And we try to put it into a more holistic view and say, all of this is important in order to actually arrive at an openness that makes research more accessible in total.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Okay. The open publishing I get from the context of EOSC, because that’s going to apply across scientific domains. It’s going to apply to mathematics and it’s going to apply to physics and everything else. But humanities as a particular focus of OPERAS, how easy a fit within the EOSC world is the world of humanities?
Sona Arasteh
I wouldn’t say easy, but I also wouldn’t say it’s as much of a challenge as people think. So if you think about digital humanities, for example, they work a lot with data. So the connection is quite clear.
And if you think about it from an open scholarly communication perspective and think about the whole process that is involved in that. So, for example, disseminating research as well, making sure that it is visible and accessible and everything. That concerns absolutely every single discipline. So, I actually, I think sometimes it’s more of a conception we have of a specific discipline than what the actual discipline actually entails.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Is there a discipline left that is not a data discipline?
Sona Arasteh
Yes, I’m biased, but I wouldn’t say so. I don’t think so. So I myself have a background in literary studies. I hold a PhD in German literature. And even for German literature, I would say it might be a more traditional discipline to some extent. It is very…
Andrew Dubber
I’m struggling to think of a more traditional discipline. Maybe philosophy.
Sona Arasteh
Okay. Maybe philosophy, depending on the branch of philosophy.
Andrew Dubber
It seems like there’s probably quite a good Venn diagram overlap between philosophy and German literature.
Sona Arasteh
Fair point. But even in German philology, we have digital humanities and we are working with approaches of distant reading. So with data, with actual data, and it’s actually an emerging branch of the discipline. So I don’t think there is anything that is not quantifiable by data anymore.
Andrew Dubber
Right. All working with data now, does that make interdisciplinarity easier since we’re all actually messing with the same stuff?
Sona Arasteh
Not necessarily, because the main consequence of it is we have more of it. Diversity is a great thing, but if you want to work across domains and work across specific sets of data, they have to be interoperable to some extent and they have to be aligned to some extent. That doesn’t mean they cannot be diverse, but they have touching points.
So not necessarily. I think there’s huge potential, but the first consequence I would say is that there is just more data.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Which seems like a good segue into what’s LUMEN.
Sona Arasteh
That’s indeed true. It is indeed a great segue because I think if you had to sum up LUMEN in a few sentences, I think it is the attempt to get a grip on data of all disciplines, but a lot of disciplines.
Andrew Dubber
A starting set.
Sona Arasteh
Yeah, a starting set. Exactly. So we are working on four disciplines, which are system science, molecular dynamics, maths and social science and humanities. I think more precisely, it’s domains, not disciplines.
Andrew Dubber
Sorry, just pause. What do you consider to be the distinction between those two things?
Sona Arasteh
Okay, so for me, a domain would be something that is very similar in methodology and has kind of a topic that they share. But a discipline for me would be something more nuanced, so maybe a subset of something. So for example, SSH is a domain, but literary studies or literary studies in a specific language would be a discipline.
Andrew Dubber
Gotcha. Okay. I’m with you.
Sona Arasteh
Yeah. So this is why I say maybe it’s more accurate to speak of domains.
Andrew Dubber
I apologize for that, but you were explaining LUMEN and the different domains that it deals with.
Sona Arasteh
Okay. Yes, exactly. So basically we start with a set of domains and we try to make them able to talk to each other in data by creating outputs such as the data mesh or an ontology platform that is called LUMIS. And that is basically the idea. I think this is the main idea behind LUMEN to actually make that possible. And ideally, the impact of the project would be that beyond the lifespan of the project, this could actually be evolved to more disciplines and have a broader approach.
Andrew Dubber
To what end?
Sona Arasteh
Well, hopefully to make things discoverable for more domains, for more researchers, ideally for society itself. Because I think what’s happening right now very often, and well, I can speak from an SSH point of view, so for social sciences and humanities, but a lot of things are happening, but you are not always aware that they’re happening in another discipline. So if we could help break up the cycle of creating redundancies and extra work, that would be great.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Okay. So coming to this as a literature scholar, you are now dealing with data meshes and ontologies and mathematics and earth system sciences, molecular dynamics. As the communications officer for this, how much of this do you need to understand and how much of it do you need to fully grasp in order to put out into the world?
Sona Arasteh
To be honest, I think it is an advantage that initially I do not fully grasp it. Because it means I have a very specific angle. If I would understand everything they would tell me at the very first instance, because I have a PhD in, I don’t know, Earth System Science or Molecular Dynamics, I wouldn’t ask the right questions.
Because my job is to make that understandable. My job is not to understand it in absolute detail, but my job is to put these people in a hot seat and ask them the right questions. And then make sure that when we promote the outputs of the project, people understand what we’re aiming at. And the challenge of that is that we appeal to so many different communities that we have to have the layers of the message right. Because, of course, if you’re a scientist in earth system science and you look at the project, you might understand things on a different level than someone looking at it from a social science and humanities perspective who has never worked with data before. So that could be. So the challenge is to make it understandable to everyone who is potentially interested in a project output, but at the same time to simplify it in a way that doesn’t necessarily reduce the complexity of the whole thing.
Andrew Dubber
Okay, so promoting the output of the project, is that the job description? And again, I’m trying to think of a better way to say this than to what end, but what’s a good outcome for disseminating the work of the LUMEN project?
Sona Arasteh
So for me, a good outcome would be that at the end of the project, we can say, okay, the things we have developed have actually been taken up by the communities. They have been tested by the communities. The communities are lively in terms of the feedback. So it would be great to create just a perfect product, but this is not realistic. So ideally, this is something that lives on and it’s kind of, I don’t know, for a better word, let’s say a living data mesh, for example, where people actually engage with.
So if we have outputs that the scientific communities actually engage with and tell us what they need and tell us what we can improve after that, and maybe even take responsibility for improving parts of that themselves, that would be the perfect outcome for me.
Andrew Dubber
Okay. So the means of communication seem to have got more problematic in the last couple of years. How do you, I’m just going to be upfront to say, I’m talking about X specifically. How do you deal with, Facebook is not a neutral platform either, and obviously nothing really is. How do you deal with the, not so much the ethics, but the approach to how you speak to a community, is it simply, well, they’re using that, so that’s where we speak to them? Or is there more a kind of a cautious approach?
Sona Arasteh
So I think what we sometimes forget is when we talk about X, that yes, it was an incredibly useful tool in talking to scientific communities, but there was also a time before X. And it only hit it off, I think, 10, 15 years ago. And then, yes, it was incredibly useful, but we also have to take into account that before that, we never had a time in history where we were able to reach out to scientific communities through a single tool.
So actually, what we’re doing now is what we have done before. So we go back to the roots to a certain bit. Social media all are problematic to some extent because simply they are commercial platforms that want to maximize their profit, which from their point of view makes sense. But from a scientific point of view, it’s often ethically dire, let’s say, the way they use algorithms and the way they promote their content. However, to some extent, we have to use them because it’s just where people discuss things. So it’s always kind of a balancing act that we have to take into account.
But what I actually find fruitful about the fact that we have decided to not use X for the project for ethical reasons is that now we really have to think about where we meet the people we want to work with. And for one part, this is the X. So it’s events. It’s conferences for scientific domains or specific disciplines where you can present things and people get interested in it and you can actually talk to them and get in touch. So I have to say I kind of like the more personal approach.
Andrew Dubber
You mean actually speaking to human beings?
Sona Arasteh
Actually speaking. Yeah, I kind of like that, I have to say. I think it’s also very productive. And also it’s personal networks of the researchers who work on a project. So if you can leverage that.
And I also think it makes a lot of sense to use this foundation of trust that you have established by knowing a person. So if you have worked with a researcher and this person tells you, I have been working on this tool or I have tested this tool and it seems to be a great idea. Do you want to try it out as well? I think this has a specific way to it. So I kind of like that it’s now more down to a personal approach, I have to say, even though, of course, X made it easier to communicate to a broad range of people. But for projects like LUMEN that try to appeal to so many different scientific domains, I think we would have had to have a more layered approach or multi-layered approach either way.
Andrew Dubber
Right. It certainly made it easier to quantify outreach for KPIs for a numerically obsessed reporting infrastructure.
Sona Arasteh
But at the same time, we have to ask ourselves, what does this data actually tell us? Because it’s one thing how many people saw a post, but in the end, it doesn’t necessarily translate to users for platforms or tools.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah. How do you get around the fact that speaking to people at conferences is much less quantifiable, even though the quality of that interaction might be much higher?
Sona Arasteh
So I think we have to rather watch out for engagement stats that we can gain through the tools that we develop, because also this is, in the end, the actual measure of success. If people use what we do, good. If we have 100,000 views on X or on any other platform, really nice. It might be an indicator for something, but it’s not really proof of anything. So I think what we work with is oftentimes indicators because there’s also this issue that to measure impact you usually need more time than just the three or four or five years of a project.
So we work with indicators to some extent, but I think it’s good to just keep in mind that in the end of the day, what we want to have is engagement. We don’t want people just to see what we do. We want them to engage with it.
Andrew Dubber
All right. Not be dead weight. So I have a question about, I guess, your personality. Which is to say, I know.
Sona Arasteh
That sounds a bit threatening, but okay.
Andrew Dubber
I know literary scholars and I would not put them in charge of communication of anything because they like to sit by themselves with a book in the library and not talk to anybody. And there’s something about you which has been able to go from that world into, no, I’m the spokesperson for all of the scientific communication. What is it about you that has led you on that journey?
Sona Arasteh
To be honest, what happened in my personal CV, so to speak, is that I have been working as an editor for an open access journal for, I think, five years. And then I was an editor for an open access research encyclopedia. So I got interested in the whole topic because I noticed how much work it is to actually do that, how little money you get to do work that is scientifically sound.
And then I think my first project was the TRIPLE Project, which actually developed the GoTriple platform that we now work on in LUMEN as well. And I got interested in that because it did discovery in a new way, in a multilingual way. And I thought, I’ll just try out for this job and see what happens. And then it was quite nice to experience research in a completely different way than I had done before. Because indeed, before that, research for me was sitting in a library, reading a book and thinking hard on my own, very alone. But it turns out, and I guess then I’m not a typical literary scholar in that regard, I quite enjoy working in a team. So maybe that’s why.
Andrew Dubber
Articulate and outgoing. There are those kinds of characteristics to it as well, but I guess my question is more about if somebody who knew you well, knew what you did for a living went, well, of course that’s what you would end up doing. Was that sort of obvious all the way along?
Sona Arasteh
No, actually, I think they would have packed me for a literary scholar, not because I’m not outgoing, but rather because I’m very into it.
Andrew Dubber
Ah, okay.
Sona Arasteh
So in terms of passion, I think they would have packed me for a literary scholar. In terms of personality, probably something more outgoing.
Andrew Dubber
Right, okay, interesting. I’m sort of interested in what makes people do what they do, so figure of the question. The open scholarly publication thing seems like a solution to the kind of problem that you described in the world of social media. Is there a similar kind of workaround for the commercial mass communication that you’re having to deal with on a day-to-day basis?
Sona Arasteh
You mean social media? Can you precise the question?
Andrew Dubber
I mean social media specifically, I guess, but more broadly, the problem that Open Scholarly Access addresses is commercial access of scholarly publication.
Sona Arasteh
Right.
Andrew Dubber
And so in the world of dissemination communication, social media primarily, but not exclusively, it seems to have the same kind of dimensions to it. Is there an equivalent of open communication within that world, or do we need to build one?
Sona Arasteh
So I’m not aware of one that maybe there are initiatives, but I don’t think anything that is actually in place that would work well. So, yes, I think we should build one. The question really is, how would we build something that would work so well? And because social media are successful because they appeal to specific things in human psyche that just make them work well.
What I really like to think about is how can we exploit that, and I’m doing quotation marks, I’m now realizing that people can’t see that, so how can we imitate that without the ethical consequences that we don’t want to have. And I don’t have a solution for that. So would it just be a toned down version that maybe doesn’t go all the way in terms of using these mechanisms, answer to that. I would love to hear an answer if someone has them, but so far I haven’t come up with a brilliant solution.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Okay. But it does seem like a challenge. If you get so far as open scholarly communication and then you need to broadcast that in some way, that there isn’t something that carries those same ethical principles out into the wider world. Is that something you struggle with or is it just the way the world is?
Sona Arasteh
So you can use platforms like Mastodon who have a higher ethical standard, so to speak, than X. I don’t see a way completely around commercial solutions, I have to say. And I’m also not a fan of just going all black and white on this, because I think the nuance is needed.
But it would be nice to maybe have a really successful option that would just be an alternative, so for people to have a choice on this. Because right now, in terms of social media, we are very dependent on commercial solutions. Because, to be fair, they work quite well, right? In their functionalities and everything, they work very, very well. We have to give them that.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah, I guess the reason I ask the question is not because I expect you to come up with a solution immediately, but because I expect the people who listen to this are probably quite smart and may collectively be able to address these sorts of problems.
And that comes from my conception of this as being about EOSC more broadly. And the European Open Science Cloud seems to be a context within which scientific ideas and open communication and those sorts of things seem to be very much prioritized. It’s in the name. So what I don’t know is how it works. And I don’t need the kind of the sort of the infrastructure model for how EOSC is put together. But how do you understand EOSC as a framework? If you were to point to EOSC and say that’s what it is and describe it to somebody who’s unfamiliar, what would you describe it as?
Sona Arasteh
I would say EOSC is, and I say this with the utmost adoration, a megalomantic attempt to make data throughout the European research area accessible and interoperable. And this is obviously a huge endeavor. And since it’s a federated infrastructure, it’s highly complex, but that’s just part of the game.
So if you wanted me to describe it in one sentence, I would do it like that. I would say it is an attempt to actually have something that we could call European data.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Why is that important that it’s European?
Sona Arasteh
You have this perspective from the inside of Europe saying it just makes it easier to cooperate within Europe. It just makes it easier to have access to research data and it makes it easier to work with research data throughout Europe. You could also obviously say from a political viewpoint that it would be good to work towards that one single market Europe point of view. So if the EOSC is then finalized as the European Open Science Cloud in full flesh, so to speak, then of course you can think about cooperating with other areas. But I think we might need to sort RMS out first.
Andrew Dubber
Sure. So it can operate on the national level. Those nations can collaborate to be on the European level. That can become part of something that operates on the global level, I guess, is the idea behind that.
Sona Arasteh
I don’t know if they have already plans for that, but I suppose that could be something that could be done at some point in the future.
Andrew Dubber
All right. Okay. Let’s go back to LUMEN because a large part of your job is communicating. LUMEN, where have we got to? And what do we have left to do?
Sona Arasteh
Basically, we’ve set the stage for everything that is to come. So there was a lot of conceptual work being done in terms of the more technical outputs of the project, in terms of the sustainability and exploitation, which is obviously something that is ongoing for the whole part of the project. For us in the communication work package, it’s mostly setting the stage for the community engagement that needs to take place in, that’s called the second phase of the project.
So basically what you usually do is you set up all the info around the project, so the rough project descriptions, everything, templates. You talk to the consortium for everyone to have a common understanding of what you’re doing. And then in this second phase, you usually try to go to the audiences you want to target either with test tools or with test kits or with prototypes and make them try it out and simultaneously try to build a community for the project to launch these products into as soon as they’re ready.
And since we have a very strong focus on co-design in LUMEN, that is actually something we can do not completely easily, but it’s within the very concept of the project to have these people in from the very beginning.
Andrew Dubber
Why co-design?
Sona Arasteh
So the idea is to develop tools for researchers, but also to develop them with them to actually make sure that they meet their needs.
Andrew Dubber
Right. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. So who should be interested in LUMEN and what should they do because they are?
Sona Arasteh
Okay. So I am biased, as you might have noticed throughout this interview.
Andrew Dubber
Sure.
Sona Arasteh
So I think everyone should be interested.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Can we narrow that down just a little bit?
Sona Arasteh
So I think in the current phase of the project, probably mostly people from the scientific domains who work as researchers in the scientific domains. So earth science, system sciences, molecular dynamics, maths and social science and humanities, they should be interested. In general, I would say subscribe to our newsletter. Go to our website, lumenproject.eu. Have a look around and let us know if you have any questions. Follow our social media. I know I’ve said ambivalent things about social media before, but follow our social media.
Andrew Dubber
But ours is a particularly good one.
Sona Arasteh
Exactly. They are beautiful. So you should absolutely hit that subscribe button. We are on LinkedIn and Bluesky, and these are usually the channels. So our website, newsletter, our website, and the social media channels to put out the information to reach all of them.
Andrew Dubber
And what sorts of things will people hear from the project? Is it just we have had this meeting and it was very successful, or is it sort of development of the project and what the outcomes of the technical development are?
Sona Arasteh
I would say it’s a mixed search. So for one, it’s, of course, calls for participation. So there are loads of opportunities to participate in the project. But, of course, there will also be things like reports or interesting summaries of what we did in the past to actually make everyone aware of what we are doing and to intrigue them to maybe take part in a later stage of the project. Because obviously we also have to document what we are doing for people to be able to follow.
Andrew Dubber
Okay. All right. My final question is back to the German literature. Taking into consideration that I would be reading it in translation, if you were to recommend one book that all people must read from the canon of German literature, what would you like them to pick up and work through? You can take a moment.
Sona Arasteh
Yeah, I need one.
Andrew Dubber
All right, let’s make it simpler. What would you have me read?
Sona Arasteh
What are you interested in?
Andrew Dubber
Oh, okay.
Sona Arasteh
Give me like one or two books you like.
Andrew Dubber
Oh, my God. Okay. So, okay. I’m from a media and cultural studies background, so I’m kind of diving into that side of the world. But I’m also interested in literary criticism and literary theory. So that’s probably not going to be of interest to anyone but me. So we could maybe broaden it out a bit. If you wanted to improve somebody’s life by opening their eyes to something in the world or getting them to think about things in a particular way, are we going with Goethe?
Sona Arasteh
We could go with Goethe, but I wouldn’t recommend Faust 1 because everyone has read Faust 1, which is a story about Faust and Margarete and everything. But actually, there is Faust 2, which Goethe has written on for 60 years of his life. And almost no one has read that because it’s incredibly complex. So it’s a hard ride. I have to admit that. So if you want to indulge in that.
Andrew Dubber
It’s a difficult sequel.
Sona Arasteh
It is very much so. Do so with a commentary. But it is a very rewarding experience because you learn a lot about culture. You learn a lot about how language is used. You learn a lot about how Goethe himself has reflected on this writing process, because as I said, he has written on this for 60 years of his life.
Andrew Dubber
Wow.
Sona Arasteh
And it’s kind of a weird secret among literary scholars, because again, everyone has read Faust 1, right? It’s in every curriculum.
Andrew Dubber
I just know it as Faust.
Sona Arasteh
Yeah, exactly. Because usually when you say Faust, you refer to the first installment, but there is a sequel. And that I would heavily recommend.
Andrew Dubber
Okay.
Sona Arasteh
For everyone who has a bit of masochism in their heart.
Andrew Dubber
Fantastic. Sona, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for joining us for the podcast.
Sona Arasteh
Thank you very much for having me.
Andrew Dubber
That’s Sona Arasteh, Communication Officer at the Max Weber Foundation, Policy Officer for OPERAS, and the Coordinator of EOSC Opportunity Area 6, Open Scholarly Communication.
And that’s the Inside EOSC podcast, a production of the LUMEN Project, which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme. I’m Andrew Dubber, and I’m back next month with another EOSC Insider. You can subscribe to Inside EOSC wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, and talk soon.