Fred Friend on Richard Poynder's Brilliant Interview of Ian Gibson

Congratulations to Richard Poynder on a brilliant and extremely valuable interview with Ian Gibson. As one who gave oral Evidence to the Science and Technology Committee in 2004, I can vouch for the accuracy of the comments on the Committee's work. Reading the Poynder interview made me fetch my copies of the Committee Report and Evidence, and I was immediately reminded of the thorough, evidence-based investigation by the Committee. The 2004 documents ran to 114 pages for the Report and 479 pages of oral and written Evidence. Compare that with the measly 140 pages in the Finch Report, with very little evidence cited, and you can understand that the Finch Group missed or ignored much valuable evidence on the value of OA repositories and came to some poor recommendations in that area. One telling aspect of the Poynder interview was the way Ian Gibson changed his view of the Finch Report once Richard Poynder told him of the evidence of the large volume of OA content in repositories, evidence which does not appear in the Finch Report....