[Air-l] Re: conference paper availability

[reuven shlozberg]

from my limited experience with scattered conferences in the last 2-3
years, it is up to the individual organization to devise the policy best
suited to its need:
American Political Science Association: Papers are available online to
members, whether they have attended the conference or not, and are not
available to non-members who atended the conference. I've not attended a
conference yet, so i don't know if they sell physical copies there. 
Canadian Political Science Association: Only some papers are available
online, it may be (i am not sure) that only papers submitted a week or
two prior to the conference are made available. Hard copies are sold (if
the presenters voluntarily submit them, and many don't) for, i think, 2$
Can. each, proceeds going to covering conference costs . 
Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association: No online
papers, hard copies sold in the same way as CPSA above
The Canadian associations for psychology and for comminaction (can't
remember the official names off hand) do not have hard copy papers at
all, don't know about online availability.

One interesting thing the Popular Culture Association / American Culture
Association does is post the emails of all participants in the
conference program. That way, if you've attended the conference and
therefore have the program, you can just email presenters and ask for
their papers, at very little additional effort to you or to your
association; this may also be done through an online list of
participants, i assume.

but here is another question related to this issue that jumps into my
mind:
as far as i know, in fiction writing (at least up to 4-5 years ago), if
you post a story you've written online, even if it is only your home
page, it is legally considered to be published. That means it is
copyrighted; but it also means any publication of that story in a
journal or anthology would legally be a reprint, which most publishers
and journals are reluctant to do. Is this the same with regards to
academic articles posted, say, in conference archives? 

reuven
Reuven Shlozberg
Political Science
University of Toronto