The Difference Between Online Magazines and Digital Editions. In Case You Didn’t Know.
These definitions are provided by Wikipedia:
An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks.
Some online magazines distributed through the World Wide Web call themselves webzines.[1] An ezine (also spelled e-zine) is a more specialized term appropriately used for small magazines and newsletters distributed by any electronic method, for example, by electronic mail (e-mail/email, see Zine). Some social groups may use the terms cyberzine and hyperzine when referring to electronically distributed resources. Similarly, some online magazines may refer to themselves as “electronic magazines” or “e-magazines” to reflect their readership demographics or to capture alternative terms and spellings in online searches.
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control. Magazines typically have editors or editorial boards who review submissions and perform a quality control function to ensure that all material meets the expectations of the publishers (those investing time or money in its production) and the readership.
Many large print-publishers now provide digital reproduction of their print magazine titles through various online services for a fee. These service providers also refer to their collections of these digital format products as online magazines, and sometimes as digital magazines.
Some online publishers have begun publishing in multiple digital formats,[2] or dual digital formats, that may include both HTML version that look like traditional web pages and Flash versions that appear more like traditional magazines with digital flipping of pages.[3]
Online magazines representing matters of interest to specialists in or societies for academic subjects, science, trade or industry are typically referred to as online journals.
A digital edition is an online magazine or online newspaper delivered in electronic form which is formatted identically to the print version. Digital editions are often called digital facsimiles to underline the likeness to the print version. Digital editions have the benefit of reduced cost to the publisher and reader by avoiding the time and expense to print and deliver like a paper edition.[1] This format is considered more environmentally friendly due to the reduction of paper and energy use. These editions also often feature interactive elements such as hyperlinks both within the publication itself and to other internet resources, searching and bookmarking, and can also incorporate multimedia such as video or animation to enhance articles themselves or for advertisements. Some delivery methods also include animation and sound effects replicating page turning to further enhance the experience of their print counterparts. Traditionally, magazine publishers have relied on two revenue sources: selling ads and selling magazines.[2] Additionally some publishers are using other electronic publication methods such as RSS to reach out to readers and inform them when new digital editions are available.[3]
Current technologies are generally either reader-based, requiring download of an application and subsequent download of each edition, or browser-based, requiring no application download (such as Adobe Acrobat[4]) and is often Macromedia Flash-based. Some application-based readers allow readers to access editions while not connected to the internet. Dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle and the iPad is also available for reading digital editions of select books, popular national magazines such as Time, The Atlantic, and Forbes and popular national newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.
Archives of print newspapers, in some cases going back hundreds of years, are being digitized and made available online. Google is indexing existing digital archives produced by the newspapers themselves or by 3rd parties.[5]
Newspaper and magazine archival is not new with microform film formats solving the problem of efficiently storing and preserving though the format lacked accessibility. Many libraries, especially state libraries in the United States are archiving their collections digitally and converting existing microfilm to digital format. The Library of Congress provides project planning assistance[6] and the National Endowment for the Humanities provides funding through grants from its National Digital Newspaper Program.[7]
Digital magazines, ezines, e-editions and emags are sometimes referred to as digital editions but some of these formats are published only in digital format unlike digital editions which replicate a printed edition as well.