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A periodical publication, or just periodical, is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar examples are the newspaper, often published daily, or weekly; or the magazine, typically published weekly, monthly or as a quarterly. Other examples would be a newsletter, a literary journal or learned journal, or a yearbook.

These examples are related to the idea of an indefinitely continuing cycle of production and publication: newspapers plan to continue publishing, not to stop after a predetermined number of editions. A novel, in contrast, might be published in monthly parts, a method revived after the success of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.¹ This approach is called part-publication, particularly when each part is from a whole work, or a serial, for example in comic books or manga. It flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century, for example with Abraham John Valpy's Delphin Classics, and was not restricted to fiction.²

The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is to periodical publications what the ISBN is to books: a standardized reference number.

Postal services often carry periodicals at a preferential rate; for example Second Class Mail³ in the United States only applies to publications issued at least thrice per year.

References

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