Have you noticed that the quality of technical papers at engineering and mining conferences these days is just not what it used to be in the old days?
It is possible that these days I know more than I used to in the old days, and that now I am more able to identify the rubbish that passes for a conference paper and presentation.
It may be that these days there are simply too many conferences. Every day here in Vancouver there is another conference with an interesting-sounding title and hollow, insubstantial presentations. There just are not enough talented paper writers to go around?
But maybe a more insidious and fundamental factor is at work? I suspect that the abysmal quality of papers at technical conferences these days is a direct outcome of the absurd insistence by conference organizers and their publishers on copyright.
Why would any intelligent person work to produce a nice paper that becomes the property of another, when they can post the same material on their own website for nothing and potentially for greater gain than will come from the loss of that effort in a dusty, forgotten volume from a foreign potentate?
I was at the SME conference in Salt Lake City earlier this year and a young mining professor told me that he no longer writes papers for conference or journals that insist on copyright. He is prepared to make a presentation via PowerPoint, but not submit a paper.
I know that I could fill hours with interesting information at many a conference about what I am doing on my project. I know I could generate many interesting and informative papers on the project. But I am not prepared to nor am I interested in writing it down for the benefit of a copyright company. So maybe I should just do what my professor does: submit abstracts and then only make PowerPoint presentations–the sole rights to which stay with him/me.
I suggest that the organizer of the next successful conference–at least as concerns quality technical papers–will be him/her who finds a modern, up-to-date, and fair system that does not discourage authors; that facilitates dissemination and perpetual easy access to the papers; and that rewards rather than penalizes the conference presenter.
Those who will come out on top, will be those who find an approach that does not result in another crop of rubbishy, half-effort papers thrown together to justify a free trip out of town. Those who will be successful will be those who avoid a system so unrewarding and thieving that only the junior engineer still scrapping his/her way up the ladder of fame is prepared to put up with the indignity.
The conference organizer who recognizes that the time when the only way to get published was to relinquish your rights to your efforts, is now past. Anybody can, and most do, e-publish. Look I am published everyday on this blog. I better go and check who owns the copyright to the stuff I write.
PS. Go to this site for an example of a place where you publiish your work copyright free: Cornell University Library (asXiv.org)
See also NU Operating System to understand how the world is changing for those who blood-suck on copyright.
I totally agree with you Jack. To have your valuable paper lost in a musty conference proceedings does not encourage you to spend quality time writing the thing in the first place.
At MEI Conferences, we ask authors to submit draft papers prior to the conference. These are not refereed- they are essentially discussion documents, but they go into the Proceedings- not a hard copy volume which nobody wants to lug around, but a much more utilitarian CD, which can easily be searched.
The authors of the papers have the copyright on their articles, so they are free to do what they wish with them- publish again on the web, at other events, or submit to journals. In fact we encourage authors to edit their drafts after the conference (to take into account conference discussions and criticisms) and then submit the final versions for peer-review in special issues of Minerals Engineering- but whether or not they do so is entirely up to them.