Life spans of Library Journal's “Best Magazines of the Year”

An annual column published in Library Journal reviews the best new magazines of the previous year. Despite being chosen for their quality, a portion of them fail at a rate described in this study. Reasons for failure and characteristics of ceased titles are described, as are difficulties in determining end dates from records in OCLC, Ulrich's, and the Serials Directory. This study reveals that OCLC records had not been closed for 30 percent of the ceased periodicals. A list of successful and widely held “best of” magazines is appended.