Organisation

Why InPlanning?

In Planning takes the lead to e-publish books, magazines and journals on spatial planning. InPlanning started as an initiative to fill in the gap commercial publishers were creating by showing a lack of interest in publications which were not written in English, while increasing their prices for products they were still willing to publish. InPlanning allows schools to maintain country related publications at low costs. These publications will also become visible on and assessable at the European level.

Prins clausplein jpeg

InPlanning is supported by the universities of Groningen, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Wageningen, Nijmegen and Ghent (Belgium).

Digital & print

We believe reading and studying can be made a lot easier and smarter by using tablets and other digital devices. Increasingly more people do read books, magazines and journals on their laptops, tablets or smartphones. Nevertheless, it will remain possible to publish in print. For instance, many schools demand printed versions of PHD publications. InPlanning therefore offers a combination: We publish a digital version and a number of printed copies on demand.

Low costs

But besides this digital revolution there are different reasons why InPlanning was needed. The platform started as an initiative to fill in the gap commercial publishers were creating by throwing out country related non-english publications, while increasing prices for products they were still willing to publish. The idea was InPlanning to becoming an initiative to allow country related publications to be produced at low costs on a European platform, which would allow as well access for and dissemination among the whole planning community.

Open access

Another major issue concerns the fast changes schools are forced to make with regard to publishing in an Open Access environment. Therefore InPlanning appreciates the strategy of some European countries (UK and Netherland for example) and the EU to force their universities to embrace the Open Access model. Open access also means the author, the editor or the producer of the product is financing its publication. However this will make a huge difference for InPlanning and the way it is structured.

Mixed strategy

InPlanning embraces the Open access approach. However, Open access is not yet the common approach. A mixed strategy of a combination of strategies is needed, as the open access model is not robust enough to be considered as the new financial model. Therefore InPlanning will offer Open access publications as well as charged publications for the lowest possible price, since we are not a commercial publisher but still need to cover our expenses. In this way InPlanning will prepare and be ready for the Open acces future while staying financially healthy.