The UK research funding agency wants publication of work it funds to be free to read from the get-go. The publisher lobby sees a problem  

UK Research and Innovation will require journal articles to be open access when they are first published. UKRI has allocated £46.7m ($88m) for “pay to publish” fees,

But if a publisher won’t do it, researchers accepted manuscripts must be open to all via an institutional repository (CMM August 9).

To which STM, (“the standard bearer for the academic publishing industry”) warns UKRI is “encouraging the widespread utilisation of freely available substitutes of final published articles,” which indeed appears the idea.

But STM warns the accepted manuscript option, “has the potential to both confuse its users and to undermine the integrity of the scholarly record and therefore of UK research,” (because of) “the unfinished and unconnected nature of the AM.”

“It also jeopardises the continued progress of the Open Access publishing transition by enabling an entirely unsustainable route.” It will certainly makes things difficult for publishers who use the old pay to read and/or the newer pay to publish business model.

Which rather seems UKRI’s idea.