Indeed. It is becoming less uncommon, especially in the UK where I work with a national policy to require research papers arising from tax payer funded work to be published using OA. Also, the Universities are really leading the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_mandate

UCL are exceptional in this regard and we work closely with the institution and many of it's students and alumni publishing their (OA) books and journal articles: http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ebooks and to download these books: http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=publisher&pId=1194

OA shares many parallels with the rise of Free/Open Source software its uncanny.