From Scientific American:

A study of open-access publishing–published last week in the open-access journalPLoS ONE – has found that the number of papers in freely accessible journals is growing at a steady 20% per year (M. Laakso et al. PLoS ONE 6, e20961; 2011). To many, the growth confirms the health of the free-access, author-pays model.

As someone who enjoys reading academic papers but doesn’t enjoy paying for them — and as someone whose taxpayer dollars support much of this research — I like this trend.