I'm in the process of learning Drupal and trying to plan a site for an academic journal (where I work). I've been experimenting with various ways of managing the issue content. Of course, the first option was E-Publish, but wasn't exactly what I needed (or maybe I didn't set it up right). I wanted the ability to have a node associated with each issue, containing the issue cover, the date and volume info, and an "in this issue" sort of teaser. Plus, I wanted to be able to create a block on the front page showing the latest issue. These and other things I wasn't exactly able to achieve with E-Publish.
So I've gone with a different strategy, which seems to be working, but comes with its own challenges. I thought some folks around here might be able to help me:
Here's what I'm doing so far: using flexinode, I've created node types called "Issue" and "Issue Content." Then in my taxonomy, I've got a vocabulary called "Issues" with terms like "Vol 18 No 2". This makes it easier to assign content to an issue (rather than using E-Publish where you have to associate it in a separate interface). The taxonomy_assoc module allows me to connect the "Issue" nodes to the corresponding Taxonomy term.
So step 1, I create a new "Issue," calling it Vol 18 No 2 or something like that. I upload the cover, type in the relevant info, mark the appropriate taxonomy association, and save. Then I create "Issue content" articles and assign them to Vol 18 No 2. So now viewing the category "Vol 18 No 2" displays BOTH the issue node and a list of "articles" belonging to that term. Also I've created a block (snippet found here) that fetches the most recent node of type "flexiblock-4" (Issues), and display that on my front page.