Wiley buys Blackwell

Wiley has acquired Blackwell.  For details, see today's press release.

Also see the news coverage.

Comments.  I don't blog this because it already has consequences for OA but because it could.

1. Wiley has a hybrid OA program called Funded Access (since August 2006; see my SOAN review) and Blackwell has a hybrid OA program called OnlineOpen (since February 2005; see my SOAN review).  Wiley's policy is much less author-friendly than Blackwell's.  After the merger, will the Wiley policy move toward the Blackwell policy?  Vice versa?   Both?  Or will each continue to apply, more or less unchanged, to separate sets of journals?
2. On another front, see Mark McCabe, The Impact of Publisher Mergers on Journal Prices.

Update. David Prosser points out (by email) that "back in 2002 the UK Office of Fair Trading issued a Statement on the market for scientific, technical and medical journals. In it, they listed the publishers of ISI-rated STM journals (Table 1, page 7). If this sale goes through then the top 15 publishers (in terms of number of journals) will have become just 9 publishers - a remarkable case of market consolidation in just 8 years."