Abstract
This article presents the central arguments made in a speech to the 39th UKSG Conference in April 2016, exploring how academic libraries and publishers can work together more effectively to deliver on our shared core mission – to foster access to the world’s knowledge across disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries for researchers, students and academics alike. It examines how some straightforward changes to publisher practices might enable simpler workflows within libraries, thereby generating significant efficiency gains. It also presents evidence for the impact of long-term trends in library spending, budgets and staffing to demonstrate why it is that university libraries, and their institutions, cannot afford to continue to pay above-inflation increases for ’big deal’ subscriptions, nor to pay twice for the same content in the form of hybrid journals. It argues that the publishers that embrace open access (OA), explore new business models and work with the higher education community to explore the transformative power of OA will reap long-term rewards.