This study provides an initiative for reflecting from a new perspective on academic libraries in Arab countries and their value to the institutions they serve. Depending on the pivotal role of databases in all educational and research activities, the study had two phases; first, demonstrating return on investment based on total downloads by King Abdulaziz University (KAU) faculty and students, which found that researchers would have to pay more than six times as much for articles if they had to purchase them rather than getting them through library databases; and secondly, measuring the usage of 52 funded research report citations drawn from library databases during the year 2011, which found that the return on investment was negative (– 0.99). The study showed that the proposed model can be applied in many Arab academic libraries.