In a win for open access in publishing two major funders will no longer cover publishing in hybrid journals. The two funders, The Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that they will not provide research funding unless the results are made publicly available for free at the time of publication. They joined a consortium of 11 European funding agencies with the same policy.
This is, I think, the proper way to force academic publishers like Elsevier to adapt their business models to the Internet age. They will kick and scream at losing their ability to rent seek but their business models depend on the free content that researchers provide to them. Researchers, on the other hand, depend on the funding agencies to finance their research. If that funding is made contingent on publishing in an open access journal, they will do so, even foregoing a more prestigious closed journal.
Taking a broader view, this could hasten the demise of the academic publishers. Despite the notorious difficulties of digital preservation, one can reasonably argue that the publishers no longer provide any added value. What researcher is going to trek to the library, dig out a dusty journal, and Xerox the paper they’re interested in when they can bring up a copy on their office computer? The publishers don’t mind this because they’re still charging the university a hefty subscription fee to provide the on-line access. But if their content dries up because researchers are publishing in on-line journals that provide access for free what is the rationale for their existence?