Here's a thought on this somewhat persistent meme —

If you're presenting a paper at a conference, why not make that paper available on your web site after the conference? Or have a general policy of supplying the paper (with whatever caveats you want to state) to those who request it?

There were several papers I didn't get to last year. "No big deal", thought I. "I'll just email 'em and ask for a copy."

Well ... email I did. And I was surprised at the amount of times I was told (however nicely) to simply "stick it". I was only able to get one paper forwarded to me post-conference. I requested, as I recall, at least six. Not a good success rate.

(FWIW, my papers from 2005 ETS and SBL are available. The 2006 papers will be available too.)

Update (2006-11-08): Jim West (Dr. Jim West) writes:

On the other hand, I can't recall having requested a paper and it being denied. True, I've only asked for a handfull. A paper really has to be quite striking for me to want to read it again after hearing it. But my experience of requesting papers has been quite positive.

True. I'm actually talking about papers I wasn't able to attend, so I have no idea if they were worth requesting or not. Perhaps they weren't, and I should just filter them as such.