Second-order effects
Dominoes are falling in the UK; funder after funder has announced that funded research must be open-access. Kudos to Wellcome Trust for being first.
I’m currently involved in a grant process locally, the first time I’ve ever worked on a grant. A key part of the process, it appears, is monkey-see-monkey-do, working out what previous grantees said and did that might have won favor with grant examiners.
As more funders insist on open access, it seems not improbable that grant seekers will consider open publication venues and self-archiving a way to win brownie points on future grant applications. I expect this to have only a modest positive effect at best… but anything positive is good news.
Funders could accelerate the effect, of course, by explicitly listing open access to previous research among the factors they weight when deciding on grants.