Publishing preprints on-line: please explain the rules

I guess there are some experienced researchers out there. Can anyone explain me what are the usual policies about publishing preprints on-line?

I can often see preprints of conference or journal articles at researcher’s pages, I guess posting them is the normal practice, but I can’t find any good explanations of do’s and don’ts. My specific questions are:

• What could be counted as a preprint? How close to the final version it could be?
• Do I have to get any permissions from a publisher to post a preprint on-line? Do I have any specific responsibilities if I pots it? Do I have to remove it once published version is on or can I keep it?
• If I post drafts on-line, what is the usual practice – to keep different versions (so it’s clear if someone refers to the old one) or to have only the recent one?
• What can go wrong with publishing preprints on-line?

I asked related question before (Weblog and paper blind review), but this one is much broader. Ideally I’d like to have my “close to finished” research work availiable on-line for a feedback, but I don’t want to get into copyright troubles with publishers…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/21.html#a847; comments are here.

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Tagged as: research