Digital magazine archives are much more future-oriented than they are backwards-looking. They are, of course both retrospective incorporating previously published issues in a searchable corpus, but they should also be prospective, since they need to be databased and accessible in such a way that the most recent issue and all previous issues are immediately and universally available to subscribers. So we should stop thinking about magazine archives as cabinets full of back issues composed of fragile and faded images from the past. They are really content engines waiting to be unleashed, sprung upon and explored, by future users in an increasingly digital-first culture.
In the last century, when magazines were simply physical, the commercial prospects and value of a title, to the publisher, largely died as soon as the decision was taken to discontinue the publication of new issues. The magazine would at that point vanish as a commercial entity. A few remnant back issues would be sold. But there would be no more serious distribution, minimal licensing, and very few financial returns for the publisher. Certainly not for the long term.
It is usually a sad and regrettable matter when a long established periodical ceases to publish new issues (except, no regrets in this office that Asian Babes has ceased publication). We term magazines which no longer have forthcoming issues as static archives. Exact Editions is finding that with digital access the potential for long term revenues from static magazine archives is highly promising. The revenues are sustainable and come from licensing the whole archive to universities and libraries. The market is global and licenses can be renewed, or they will be upgraded to a considerably chunkier Perpetual and Ongoing Access license.
It is especially encouraging to find major libraries and research institutions seeking permanent and perpetual licenses to the complete content of the magazine and its archive, when they had never bought a single issue of the original print edition. There are several magazines in the roster of perpetual access titles with Exact Editions that must now be more widely available and accessible in educational libraries than they were in the days of print. Magazine archives when they are complete, digitally instant, and well presented can be more like mature bottles of Chateau Rothschild than the dusty or stiff piles of paper that hang about the traditional books repository.
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