1107.2 (A) The Collective Work Requirement
A serial must be a collective work to qualify for this group registration option. 37 C.F.R. § 202.4 (D) (1)(iii).
A serial will be considered a collective work if it contains “a number of contributions” that constitute “separate and independent works in themselves,” and if the contributions “are assembled into a collective whole” “in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “collective work” and “compilation”).
For example, a journal that contains multiple articles, photographs, and illustrations could be considered a collective work if those contributions are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a sufficiently creative manner. By contrast, a monthly publication would not satisfy this requirement if the publisher simply combined all of the articles from a particular source and republished them in chronological order.