I don't know enough about grant funding to hazard a real guess. That is an interesting issue, though. I presume that grant committees are not typically staffed by people well-versed in the subject area? Would they not be capable of recognizing a global acceptance of an applicants prior work without a fallible journal citation? I know that in many fields the amount of other work which cites a given publication is a very important factor, perhaps that would play a role?
What position would it put journals in if they were reduced to providing vetting for grant committees? If instead of being arbiters of scientific validity, which they are poorer at than open publishing, they simply become some sort of thing similar to ratings agencies that provide parents with an unreliable best-effort guide to content acceptability without needing to actually learn about the thing in detail?
What position would it put journals in if they were reduced to providing vetting for grant committees? If instead of being arbiters of scientific validity, which they are poorer at than open publishing, they simply become some sort of thing similar to ratings agencies that provide parents with an unreliable best-effort guide to content acceptability without needing to actually learn about the thing in detail?