Guest blog post by Jan Erik Frantsvåg, Open Access Adviser at University Library of Tromsø and chairman of the board of SPARC Europe. In discussions, I often hear the cry «let us get rid of the publishers – let us do this ourselves». I understand why this is said – e.g. the extreme profit levels of some major publishers – still, I am sceptical. It’s obvious that we need to do something about how the market works, and who has ownership of and control over content. Giving away content and buying it back, ridding ourselves of potential readers and creating superprofits for the publishers in the process, is something we should stop doing. But I think that getting rid of (commercial) publishers as such is a bad idea. The debate should be about what role(s) publishers should have, what business model(s) they