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