Outlined below is a bundle of nine policies and principles that are recommended for research funders and grantees. A wide-enactment of this bundle could lead to a quiet improvement in scientific communication. While well-intentioned, funding mandates that focus on making published articles (or their preprints) available as open access objects assume and strengthen the status quo journal publication system. In contrast, the policies and principles included in this brief document seek to make positive changes to the scholarly communication system by decreasing incentives (which funders have had an unintentional role in sustaining) for researchers to publish more frequently than necessary, especially in outlets with financially or socially exclusionary practices. These policies do not preclude open access preprints or journal articles, but instead redirect the focus toward bolstering incentives which may result in a stronger culture of (open and anonymous) review, as well as the report of findings in developing scholarly communication spaces that emphasize accessibility, reusability, and replicability.