"Funding pressure changes everything."

Cory Doctorow, The Foundations of Open Access, Free Culture @ NYU, January 9, 2007.  Excerpt:

So, this weekend is the Open Access summit and I wanted to share some thoughts on how to help bring this on a widespread basis.

Closely tied to open access is encouraging funding organizations to include language in their grant proposals which promotes open access, for code and content. This is in the foundation's best interest - call it "philanthropic ROI".

On the educational institution's side of the fence, funding pressure could really tip the scale in favor of opening their work....Funding pressure changes everything....

Already, the Hewlett Foundation is moving in this direction, but if/when others follow it could be very decisive force in the campaign for Open Access.

The Hewlett Foundation's Education Division provides grants in the area of Open Educational Resources, and all grant applications have to describe their approaches to
intellectual property in the terms below (these are copied directly from the grant application).

There's more at Open Educational Resources.

...If you are developing content or producing articles, reports, white papers, or other written materials, please identify which of the Creative Commons licenses you will use to license the content....

If you are developing software, please identify which of the Open Source Initiative-approved licenses you will use to license the software....

If your work involves the creation of data sets, please see [the Science Commons FAQ on database licensing] and be prepared to discuss the open license plans with program staff."

So, one way to put pressure on folks is to convince more funding agencies to begin stipulating for Open Access....