Another way that funders could help

Dorothea Salo, Second-order effects, Caveat Lector, August 23, 2006. Excerpt:

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.

Comment. This is definitely another way that funders could help. But they tend to take the opposite course and give the most credit to publication in venerable high-prestige journals. This policy discriminates against OA journals (but only because they are new) and disregards OA archiving. It doesn't negate the good effects of an OA mandate on funded research, but it shows a commitment to OA only one front when funders could help on at least two.