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Recent changes in the availability of online literature and the speed with which it can be located could greatly alter planners' use of prior research. We intend this guide to lead planners and planning researchers to more effectively use online bibliographic tools and content. We outline the recent changes, including online electronic abstracting and indexing services that facilitate quick, comprehensive searches for relevant works, and aggregators that permit electronic access to the full text of journal articles. We examine recent developments from the perspectives of planning researchers, planning practitioners, planning employers, and planning journal editors, and recommend how they can act to enhance planners' access to and benefit from published research. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Computers have changed urban planners' operating environments and work lives in recent years, dramatically increasing access to information from secondary sources (Crepeau, 2003).' Now, changes in tools for searching published literature provide an opportunity to greatly alter planners' use of prior research, allowing them to learn more efficiently from previous work, and to reduce the separation of practice from scholarship. This guide is intended to improve planners' use of the available online literature search resources.

It is now possible for a planner to quickly and effectively search the most recent years of thousands of magazines and journals and to assemble a substantial record of prior research on a given subject in less than a day's work. Many can accomplish this from the comfort of their own desks, with downloadable full-text copies of works that can be printed on the office printer or stored for later reference.

Information has long been central to planners' work. In 1979 Catanese noted, "the core of knowledge and competency of the profession invariably includes getting and using information" (p. 91). The information needs of planners are broad, however. Planning information includes primary and secondary information about natural and human systems, legal requirements and planning practices from other jurisdictions; results of analyses, and thoughts and opinions of affected and knowledgeable persons (Kaiser, Godschalk, & Chapin, 1995, pp. 91-94; Klosterman, 2000). We need this information in order to share it with decision makers who want it, to use it in our own analyses and recommendations, and to understand better what we ourselves believe and want for our communities and our practices.

Journal-published research is only a part of the information universe planners need. A 1970 British study of the importance of various information sources to planning practitioners ranked journals 7th among 14 types (White, 1970, pp. 46-47), and its author later commented, "The journal is not a source of major importance to the planner in practice, though this statement must be taken to reflect inadequate provision and inadequate time for reading" (White, 1974, p. 42). White's statement is over 35 years old, but the situation has not changed dramatically. The Planner's Use of Information (Dandekar, 2003), published by APA Planners Press, does not discuss refereed literature. Instead, the volume's chapter on secondary sources suggests, "The best technique for finding planning information may remain old-fashioned, human contact" (Yen & York, 2003, p. 85). Some academics have also downplayed the usefulness of research in planning curricula (Alexander, 2005; Baum, 1997), including research published in this journal (Kaufman, 1974, p. 129). This results partly from reasonable doubts about whether conclusions drawn in one place apply in other communities (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Innes, 1998; Klosterman, 1997, pp. 49-50; Sandercock, 2004).

Despite the secondary role that research published in journals has historically played in the day-to-day work of many planners, now that stakeholders and citizens have easier access to more and better information, planners should know what the research literature says. Articles published in refereed research journals are peer-reviewed by experts in the field and so are subjected to rigorous verification and analysis. Often a modest fraction of the submissions sent to research journals are accepted and those that are typically require substantial revisions. As a result, they can offer more reliable information and more careful interpretation than other sources.2

White (1974) noted that if planners took advantage of indices and abstracting services it would allow them to make better use of research in journals (p. 43). With the availability of online bibliographic tools, research findings are much easier to locate than they used to be. If practicing planners can access published research more easily, they are more likely to use it and more likely to provide feedback to researchers, allowing them in turn to make their subsequent research more useful for practitioners.

Unfortunately, many of the best online search services require expensive subscription fees. Few planning agencies subscribe to these services; indeed, few have regular access to more than a small fraction of journals in which planning research is published. In the future, competitive pressures and demands from citizens and elected officials will push the planning workplace to change in this regard. For now, the planner on the wrong side of the digital divide has to rely on a combination of public-access sources and borrowed facilities. But even these can be a great improvement over what was the norm 5 years ago.

We explain the recent changes in search capabilities and journal literature available online, briefly review the major services available and their potential use by planning researchers and practitioners, and present results of a sample literature search. Finally, we discuss the implications of the recent changes.

Digital Bibliographic Basics

Three aspects of how planning research is published have changed fundamentally: (1) many journals now publish electronically, either exclusively or in addition to publishing in paper format; (2) electronic abstracting and indexing (A&I) services offer greater scope, speed, and convenience of access than ever before; and (3) publishers and aggregators sell electronic access to full-text articles from a range of journals.

Electronic journals made their first appearance just over 10 years ago. Certain journals are only available electronically, including open-access journals that are built on alternative business models and do not charge for access (Lewis, 2001), but these currently include few planning journals (e.g. European Journal of Spatial Development, Journal for Education in the Built Environment). Many journals are now available both electronically and in paper, although in some instances electronic editions are only available to institutions, not to individuals. Some publishers also offer alerting services that send tables of contents of their journals via e-mail. Those who want to view electronic files of journal articles must generally have a recent version of an Internet browser installed on the computer they are using, and a recent version of the freeware program Adobe Acrobat Reader (Bell & Wolf, 2005).

Online A&I services and some research library catalogue tools allow searching of abstracts and sometimes the full text of documents using subject keywords, titles, or author's names, returning matching abstracts and bibliographic citations from a range of years. The more advanced A&I services also offer forward and backward citation searching. This makes it feasible, when one locates an article, to find both the earlier works it cites and later works which cite it. This capability is particularly useful for identifying the full range of relevant documents in a literature search. Some A&I services also facilitate access to the full text of these documents by providing links to the subscribing library's catalogue or to electronic journal aggregators. Some link directly to the online article if the institution has a subscription to the journal, or a per-item fee is paid.

Journals which are available electronically can be obtained either through a subscription to the title from the publisher or from full-text journal aggregators. Full-text journal aggregators offer electronic or fax-back copies of articles from journals from many publishers, including independent and association-published journals. Some journals may be available through a number of different aggregators. Often a library's online catalogue will offer direct links to the aggregators who carry journals to which the library subscribes.

Journals Available Electronically

Listing peer-reviewed journals in which planning research is published is not straightforward, because of the overlaps with architecture, civil engineering, economics, environmental science and environmental studies, geography, landscape architecture, political science, policy analysis, public administration, real estate, sociology, and urban studies. We define a group of 97 selected planning journals for our discussions, including all the peer-reviewed journals indexed in the Journal of Planning Literature (49 journals), the Planning Literature Information Service (30 journals), or listed in the housing and urban planning category by Ulrica's International Periodicals Directory (65 journals). All but 12 of these journals were available online in September, 2006 (CSA Illumina, 2006). Three (Children, Youth and Environments, DISP, and Housing Policy Debate) were offered without charge to all users; the others require payment for online access. Our list of selected planning journals appears in Table 1, with online availability indicated.

Journal prices vary considerably. Among widely recognized journals, JAPA is sold at the annual institutional subscription rate of $98, Journal of Planning Education and Research is $297 annually, Town Planning Review is $440 annually, Planning Theory and Practice is $474 annually, while the monthly Urban Studies is $1,451 annually.3 Among those that offer both electronic and print subscriptions, purchasing both print and electronic access is often only slightly more expensive than purchasing either form of access separately. Two significant advantages to electronic access are that it allows users to retrieve articles from their desks, and that many journals' annual subscription rates include access to all electronically available volumes of the journal, not just those produced during the subscription period.

A&I Services Specific to Planning

A small number of online A&I services focus on planning-related content: Journal of Planning Literature, Planning Literature Information Service, IDOX Information Service, and Urbadoc/Acompline. These are all subscription services. None of diem matches the comprehensive coverage and functionality of the general-purpose A&I services described below, but their focus on planning-related content makes them important sources for planning research. Figure 1 describes these services.

The Journal of Planning Literature and the Planning Literature Information Service (which is sold as part of the journal Planning Practice and Research) have standard institutional subscription rates ($874 and $612, respectively), while IDOX, Urbadoc, and Accompline are sold by contract with varying terms, including the maximum number of simultaneous users allowed from the subscribing institution. The best available information suggests that rates with the minimum number of simultaneous users begin around GB £3500 (approximately $6,800) for IDOX, euro1400 (approximately $1,800) for Urbadoc, and GB £770 (approximately $1,500) for Acompline.4

Other A&I Services

Three of the major cross-disciplinary A&I services include broad coverage of planning journals, as well as many journals in related fields from which planners draw: Google Scholar, Elsevier's SCOPUS, and Thomson Scientific's Web of Science. Figure 2 describes these services.

SCOPUS and Web of Science are the subscription A&I industry leaders. They both offer a high level of functionality and very large searchable universes. Google Scholar, a free, open-access service, cannot match the functionality of these other services and its coverage is not made public, but it has shaken up the industry and revolutionized online reference searching because it is free.

SCOPUS and Web of Science are expensive, and prices are not publicly advertised, but large academic institutions may pay annual subscriptions in excess of $50,000 for each of these services, while smaller organizations may be able to arrange subscriptions with limited numbers of simultaneous users at a fraction of those rates. We understand that consortia arranging access on behalf of groups of organizations have successfully negotiated rates that are discounted below what those organizations would pay if purchasing alone.

Many other subject-specific A&I services focus on fields that overlap with urban planning. We also list other databases that include planning or similar topics in their subject coverage in Figure 2. We found these to index at least some content from 25 or more of our selected planning journals. Here too, prices are variable.

Full Text Electronic Journal Providers

A growing number of services now provide access to the full text of journal articles from a range of publishers. This is a developing area with changes taking place rapidly, but at present IDOX Information Service is the only planning A&I service that also provides full-text electronic journal content. There are other multidisciplinary and field-specific services that also provide full text for some of our selected planning journals, as shown in Figure 3.

In addition to these aggregators, major journal publishers such as Blackwell (http://www.blackwell-synergy .com), Sage (http://online.sagepub.com), Elsevier (www .sciencedirect.com), and Taylor and Francis (http:// journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/) also host electronic versions of their own titles, from which subscribers can access articles without charge and nonsubscribers may purchase downloads on a per-article basis.

Digital Bibliographies for the Planning Researcher

Researchers educated only a generation ago recall a literature review process that began with hours scanning paper A&I services leading to lists of works of possible interest; further hours spent walking library stacks surveying those possibilities; days spent at the photocopy machine collecting the works that proved of interest; and weeks waiting for interlibrary loan services to provide articles from those journals that one's library did not own. After reviewing these materials, the reference lists in the works gathered would lead to further rounds of the same process, ending, in the most comprehensive searches, only when they yielded sufficiently few new leads.

For today's researcher based at a university or well-funded think tank, the networked desktop computer leads to a choice of online A&I services with substantial planning content, as well as full-text access to thousands of serials made available from a range of online aggregators and publishers to whom the institution has paid the necessary fees. After using keyword queries to search one or more of the A&I services, the researcher downloads the selected full-text articles directly to his or her office computer. Even when the institutional library doesn't own a given serial, purchased copies can be downloaded instantly or returned by fax-back services within a day. Later, after the researcher identifies the most significant of the works gathered in this manner, he or she follows the citation trail forward and backward in Web of Science or SCOPUS, to further article references. As before, this process may continue until the incidence of new citations falls off. Unlike before, paper-and-pencil and photocopying work is minimal.

Compared to a few years ago, the search process allows access to more recent materials, is faster, easier, more complete, and likely to be more useful. What might have been a month-long literature search just a decade ago may be completed in under a week using the new online tools. Previously, just-published work might have taken as long as a half year to reach the researcher; new articles are now available in days. While the researcher used to be absent from his or her office while conducting a thorough literature review, the new search is conducted from one's own desk. Most importantly, because completeness used to require elaborate efforts, today's lightning-fast searches are more likely to lead to fuller results.

With these improvements, it is far easier to have a complete picture of what prior research has said on a topic, and to engage in iterative conversations with communities of researchers working on similar subjects (Hopkins, 2001). Subject to licensing agreements, electronic copies of articles may be stored on end-users' personal computers, where they can be found and searched again easily in the future. Graphics can be copied with high resolution for use in presentations and reproduction in later reports (again, subject to copyright laws). This greater ease of access and use is leading to increased rates of citation to prior work (Stiftel, 2005).

It is still possible to overlook important sources while searching online A&I services, much as it was with the old paper A&I sources; by failing to examine all similar terms (e.g. cost-benefit and cost effectiveness) or search all spelling variants (e.g. behavior and behaviour). In addition, errors can result from entering search terms incorrectly. Finally, since time for reading and analysis is generally limited, it is important to make judicious decisions about how to structure searches, and to be selective in choosing what to print, what to download, and what to make notes about (Rhodes, 2005, pp. 142-144).

Digital Bibliographies for the Practicing Planner

For the planning practitioner, online bibliographic services offer the potential to reduce the perceived gap between practice and research. We believe that this gap is due in part to mismatch between when research is read and when it is needed. Online searching makes it much easier to find research when it is needed, with the result that users are more likely to find the research useful.

The typical practitioner, however, faces a very different situation than the typical researcher. Few planning agencies have extensive electronic journal subscriptions, and fewer still subscribe to A&I services. For most practitioners, up-to-date, full, online searching from their own desk is not an option. They must rely on open-access services or work at a remote site such as a university library.

The major publishers' self-maintained journal websites (e.g., Sage Journals Online, Science Direct [Elsevier], Blackwell, Taylor and Francis) and some secondary aggregators of full text electronic journals (e.g. Ingenta, Meta-Press) offer free search capabilities, charging only for access to the full text, which can be purchased on an article-by-article basis, often in the range of $25 per article. This pay-as-you-need-it arrangement can be an affordable way to acquire just the material that is necessary in the context of a specific project.

In 2004, the search engine firm Google introduced the Google Scholar service aimed at facilitating entree to published research literature; providing free searching and access to a large number of online abstracts, open-access articles, and other research materials, though exactly what resources are included remains unclear. Often this service leads to a publisher's web site, where an abstract is available, but viewing the full text of the article requires purchasing either a subscription to the journal or the file of the individual article. Initial reviews suggested that this service was a poor substitute for Web of Science or SCOPUS, both in its ability to handle complex search requests and in the completeness of its coverage, but changes have led to more positive recent assessments (Henderson, 2005; Quint, 2004). One Google Scholar search is equivalent to numerous searches on individual publishers' web sites, and also provides links to other free information sources such as government documents, conference papers, and university reports. Some hope that the competitive pressure from Google Scholar, which is open-access, will force the subscription A&I services to improve and/or reduce prices (Kennedy & Price, 2004).

Finally, there is the option of traveling to a library that will allow use of the subscription A&I services and access to full-text services. For those working in major metropolitan areas or university towns, this may be easily arranged. Although library policies on public access vary, all U.S. municipal research libraries and many public university libraries allow in-library use of electronic materials by any resident of the city, state, or region, and other research libraries may permit this for a fee. In a few instances, planning agency libraries have exchange relationships with larger nearby libraries, through which agency staff are permitted user privileges.5 Travel to a library is not as convenient as working at one's own desk, but it can give the planning practitioner access to the same online bibliographic resources available to the university-based researcher.

An Example: Tracing Florida's Creative Class

In this hypothetical situation a city is rethinking its economic development strategy, and one of the commissioners wants staff planners to examine Richard Florida's ideas on the creative class, tying economic vitality to population diversity. A literature search is the appropriate first step.

We simulate this literature search in two ways. First, we report results of an electronic search using a major A&I service and subscription electronic journal access, as Researcher A might conduct using a university library. Second, we report an electronic search using only open-access sources, as Researcher B might conduct from home or from their desk at a workplace that does not subscribe to any A&I services or electronically available journals.

Researcher A might begin the search using Web of Science, conducting a citation reference search using the query: "Florida R* 2002" to pick up articles that cite Florida's seminal work in this area (Florida, 2002), as shown in Figure 4.

This initial query returned 237 items, but keeping only articles published in English reduced the list to 176, as shown in Figure 5. A manual scan deleting articles with titles that are clearly not relevant to local economic development further reduced the list to 126 articles appearing in 64 different journals (including 20 from our list of selected planning journals). All 64 journals are available online, although not all have full historical collections online available for all subscribers.

Researcher A could export this list of works directly into bibliographic management software6 on his or her desktop computer, or could e-mail it to him- or herself, to obtain the results in electronic format. The researcher could then review the abstracts or keywords of these works to assess how many are sufficiently interesting to warrant collection of the full text. In most cases, this first-round search would be followed by one or more additional rounds, as the researcher refines his or her sense of the key issues described in the literature and identifies other possible search terms, and/or other seminal works whose citation trail would be productive to follow.

To illustrate the process of acquiring the full text, let's work with the most highly cited work found: an article by Storper and Venables (2004) appearing in the Journal of Economic Geography. Researcher A would search the online catalogue of his or her library to gain access to the journal article online; at Florida State University, the Journal of Economic Geography is available from ABI/Inform Global, a ProQuest service. The university's online library catalogue leads us to the abstract of this article on the ABI/Inform Global site, as shown in Figure 6, and then to full text for the article, as shown in Figure 7. Similar steps could lead to the online versions of the other 125 articles on our short list, assuming the researcher's library had subscriptions to all these journals. A thorough literature search would not stop here, but would go on to follow the citation trail further, repeating the process to identify works citing the most useful works already found. But, these next steps require judgements that are beyond the scope of this example.

Researcher B, who has no access to subscription A&I services, might begin by using the search term "Florida Richard," in Google Scholar and restricting results to the years 2002-2006, as shown in Figure 8.7 This initial query returns links to items by Florida, about Florida, or that cite Florida. Prominent is a link providing citations to Florida (2002). Choosing this link leads us to 357 works (see Figure 9), of which 325 are published in English, and 110 appear in refereed journals. The other works include government reports, working papers, book reviews, dissertations, and theses. Review of the journal article titles allows elimination of 31 of these as not likely to be relevant to local economic development, leaving 79 articles appearing in 60 different refereed journals, including 14 of our selected planning journals. All 60 of the journals are available online, although not all have full historical collections available online for all subscribers. It is possible to import Google Scholar results into bibliographic management software, but it is not possible to e-mail the results to oneself directly from Google Scholar, nor can the list of findings be culled within Google Scholar.

Among works by authors other than Florida, Google Scholar reports that the work most commonly cited in other publications8 is an article by Maskell and Lorenzen (2004) published in Urban Studies. Following the link provided leads to publisher Taylor and Francis' website (Figure 10), which offers the article for downloading at a price of $22. Other articles are available through various direct-click methods, usually for similar prices.

How do the two methods of searching compare in this instance? The Google Scholar search produces more items (357 as opposed to 237), but Web of Science provides more refereed journal articles that are relevant to local economic development than does Google Scholar (126 as opposed to 79). A slightly larger number of journals are represented in the Web of Science results (64 to 60), with more of our selected planning journals included (20 versus 14). The Web of Science search permits online selection of desired items and e-mailing the results; the Google Scholar search does not, although both facilitate importing into bibliographic management software. The cost of acquiring the full text of the materials identified will depend on the subscriptions held by the institutions involved and on the choices made about which items to acquire, but may be nothing more than the cost of printing for the universitybased search, and potentially as much as $1,500 for someone working with no journal subscriptions who acquires all the items identified. Readers of this journal may note that when this search was conducted in November 2006, Web of Science returned two articles appearing in JAPA while Google Scholar returned one.

Recommendations for Planning Agencies and Consultants

From the perspective of the firms and agencies who do planning work, the move to digital bibliographies raises issues of work patterns, cost and training. Most planners' work patterns have not changed sufficiently in response to the new bibliographic technologies. Many employers still subscribe to paper journals, expect staff to conduct their research where published materials are stored rather than at their desks, and to make limited use of electronic A&I services. We believe that, as a result, planning work is less well informed and less efficient than it could be. Topping our list of desirable changes would be for planners to make greater use of A&I services, but arranging desktop electronic access to journals is also important. It makes sense for planning agencies to subscribe electronically to those journals most relevant to the work they do, and to develop a policy about when they will pay for full text from other sources.

Such changes cost money, and acquisition budgets of public planning agencies and private firms are often small. Many of the selected planning journals' institutional subscription costs are high, and subscription A&I services even higher. However, fiscal constraints should not cause planners to overlook prior research, as there are other options. It is possible to rely entirely on the open-access services, purchasing articles individually as needed (although agency procurement procedures do not always accommodate online purchases easily). Some agencies, especially those with professionally staffed libraries, have negotiated exchange relationships with major research libraries nearby. One possibility is for an agency to donate materials to the research library in exchange for in-library (or even remote online) research library use privileges for agency staff.

There is also the possibility of creating buyers' consortia. Electronic journal publishers and the operators of A&I services engage in variable pricing, responding to market conditions and the different use patterns among institutions. Many universities now band together with other institutions to purchase subscriptions to serials and A&I services, increasing their buying power and sharing costs. Such consortia typically negotiate considerable discounts in peruser fees. Thus if planning organizations formed buying consortia they might greatly reduce costs, although this would require considerable effort. The American Planning Association or another organization could provide a useful service by taking on this task.

Savvy negotiation with providers can prove beneficial, even for buyers operating alone. Some services are available from as many as a half dozen vendors, each eager to make the sale. Typical A&I service contracts allow for dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous users, as is appropriate for a library, but agencies do not require such high-volume access. Negotiating contracts that allow only one user at a time may result in considerable cost savings. It can also be economical to purchase electronic journal subscriptions in collections from vendors. Sage Publications, for example, sells subscriptions to all 12 of its planning journals together for 15% less than subscribing to the same 12 individually.

Awareness is every bit as important as cost. The changes in digital bibliographies described here have happened very quickly. Many professional planners are not fully aware of the potential value of using the new tools. The learning curve is not steep, but most planning agencies have no program for training staff in the use of new library resources. Small investments in regular training for planning staff in the use of library tools should pay off handsomely in improved efficiency and quality of work.

Implications for Planning Journals

Commercial publishing houses in general are more concerned with finances than with how widely journal content is available. As more users subscribe to electronic editions and find research using online A&I services, it has become essential that a journal be fully available online and participate in a wide array of A&I services and full-text aggregators in order to reach as many readers as possible. Editors should track the participation of their journals in the key services and lobby their publishers to secure participation when necessary. It is not difficult to persuade A&I services to include a journal, as long as some basic standards are met. Thomson Scientific, for instance, requires peer-reviewed journals to meet three criteria before it will include them in its Web of Science: (1) works in the journal must be cited regularly in other journals; (2) the journal must provide full bibliographic information in English for each work included and for works cited; and (3) the journal must come out on time (Testa, 2003).

The citation rate has become a very important indicator of a journal's importance, noted by both the publishing industry and library acquisition agents. Journal Citation Reports regularly publishes citation rates for all the journals included in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index. Both publishers and librarians review these statistics regularly to make decisions about journal budgets and library acquisitions. Among the statistics most often used is the impact factor, which measures the average number of citations to articles published in the journal during the previous two years (Webster, 2006). This attention to impact factors provides a compelling reason to keep delays in the peer review and publication processes to a minimum.

Journal editors also face the question of international distribution and use, especially outside the English-speaking world. While English has grown as the language of communication among urban planning scholars, it is by no means universal among such scholars and far from universal among planning practitioners (Albrechts, 2004; Kunzmann, 2004). As use of A&I services grows in non-English speaking countries, it will be increasingly important for planning research to be accessible in a variety of languages. English-language planning journal editors can increase the likelihood that their content will be included in A&I services abroad by publishing some content in translation (Stiftel, Watson, & Acselrad, 2007, pp. 14-16). Publishing article titles, keywords, and abstracts in multiple languages, as many non-English journals now do, would undoubtedly increase foreign readership and use of the scholarship in our English-language journals.

Conclusions

The digital bibliographie revolution has the potential to greatly increase planners' use of research, but the urban planning profession will have to make many changes if it is to realize this potential. These changes will have to come in all quarters: researchers, practitioners, agencies, editors, and the organized profession.

Most of those who already do substantial planning research have the tools at their fingertips, but may need to learn to select wisely and to make the best use. With faster access, expectations for currency are increasing, and both new research and analysis of prior work appear in print faster than previously. Planning researchers should take advantage of this, and read not only original research in their areas of interest, but also related publications that follow, both to check the accuracy of the original findings, and to gain a more nuanced understanding. To do this they will have to be familiar with digital bibliographies.

While the norms of planning practice have historically downplayed the importance of published research, digital bibliographies now allow planners to locate the most relevant research results precisely when they are needed. This increased ease of access will allow various advocates and interests to inform themselves, and should encourage practicing planners to make greater use of the research literature to keep pace. Even without agency subscriptions, planning practitioners can gain many advantages using open-access services and borrowed facilities.

Planning agencies should respond to these challenges by changing work patterns, budgets, procurement habits, and training resources. Larger agencies should facilitate staff access to both A&I services and electronic journal subscriptions through informed negotiation with providers, partnership agreements allowing staff access to regional research libraries, and by clarifying policies to allow staff to purchase individual articles online as appropriate. In the years ahead, junior staff will increasingly arrive understanding the tools, but more senior staff will often benefit from training.

Planning journal editors should track these continuing patterns of change so that they can maximize the likelihood that work in their journals will be abstracted, indexed, and used as widely as possible. They should prepare content so it can be readily located by digital bibliographic searches and searching, including by those who speak languages other than English; and they should push for indexing their journals in as many of the major A&I services as feasible. Editors and publishers of planning research should also be attentive to the challenges and the potentials created by open-access journal publishing.

Planners' professional associations and the agencies, nonprofits, and firms who employ planners should form consortia to increase their buying power on journal and A&I service subscriptions. In the United States, the American Planning Association should examine the potential to create a planning-specific A&I service, similar to that provided by IDOX in Britain, that might make planning literature available to practicing planners through a unified portal at modest cost.

If we undertake these changes, planning practitioners will be better informed of practices elsewhere, planning research will be more widely used, and new research will be more informed and relevant.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank these planning librarians who provided invaluable assistance and perspective: Jane Carlin (University of Cincinnati), Lynne De Merritt (Municipal Research & Services Center of Washington), Linda Drake (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Deborah Fowler (City of Toronto, City Planning Division), Shannon Paul (American Planning Association), Lindsay Seller (Oxford Brookes University), Deborah Thompson-Wise (University of Tennessee [ret.]), Julie Tunnell, (Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Oakland, CA), and Priscilla Yu (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). We benefited from the assistance of Chandrima Mukhopadhyay, the insightful comments of the anonymous referees, and the thoughtful direction of this Journals editors.

Editor's note

APA is currently evaluating proposals from several possible new publishers for JAPA. All the proposals under consideration would increase JAPA's visibility and accessibility via the Internet. Thus we hope that JAPA will be much more readily available to planning researchers in the near future than it was when this article was written.