Personally, I would like to see the Edition Group eliminated altogether. It is obvious that many users don’t understand the purpose behind them, and maybe I’m included in that group as I have asked the question several times without receiving a clear answer. Maybe the person who constructed the Edition Group system could reveal the purpose behind them?
IMO there are too many components, i.e. Edition, Work and Edition Group which leads to confusion.
If the only purpose of the Edition Group is to collect like formats, then I suggest a filter would be a simpler solution. The format should be a mandatory field in the Edition and this data could be used to refine the view list on the author page. This would require a change to the author page so that either the list of all Works, or all Editions could be viewed. When viewing the Editions, a user could refine the search by format.
I have outlined the need for author series to be controlled at the Work level, similar to how Goodreads manages series: Series by authors - how to manage
As I commented in another Forum topic, I feel adapting the Edition Group for collecting series is a band-aid solution that has immense limitations: "Omaha" the Cat Dancer Work set up - need clarification
In respect of periodicals, maybe a dedicated field could be added to the Edition for that purpose.