The open access to publication argument already has nearly unstoppable momentum. In 2008 the NIH --- by far the world's largest funding agency, with a $30+ bil

The open access to publication argument already has nearly unstoppable momentum. In 2008 the NIH --- by far the world's largest funding agency, with a $30+ billion dollar a year budget --- adopted a policy requiring that all NIH-funded research be made openly accessible within 12 months of publication. See, e.g.: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm Similar policies have been enacted by all 7 of the Research Councils in the UK. And there are many more such policies in place at institutions all over the world, including Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and many others. A treasure trove of information about open access is Peter Suber's website. See, for example, his timeline: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm The timeline stops in 2008 (he changed jobs), but if you look at progress up to that point, it's clear that this has enormous and rapidly increasing buy-in at grant agencies, libraries (who are the main "customer" for journals, in that they pay) and major universities. It will be very difficult for other parties to stop this change, provided people continue to work for it. At this point, momentum is starting to build for more open data, and also for other kinds of systematic online sharing of research information. Why not give researchers an incentive to (say) upload online videos showing how certain lab experiments are done? At least in some labs there's stuff that's very difficult to describe in a paper, but easy to show in a video. And so this would be very valuable. (There are initiatives underway to do this, e.g.: http://www.jove.com/ http://www.jove.com/ ) I entirely agree with your final point - "The system of funding and promotion is going to have to undergo a very big shift before this dream comes to life". There's enough traction now within universities to start to have this discussion. Certainly, some senior scientists are dismissive; but many are extremely interested, and engaged.