Many of those involved in supporting electronic and open access publishing and communication ventures see ‘the lack of willingness of the faculty to change’ as a key barrier to moving to more cost-effective publishing models in an environment of escalating costs and constrained resources. Our goals are to assess through in-depth interviews what faculty in different disciplines actually say they need and value in their scholarly practice. Such an approach will provide a nuanced, dispassionate, and insightful analysis of the roles that universities and faculty do and can play in the resolution of the perceived ‘crisis in scholarly communication’ in an electronic age.