What Remains

A conference is planned as a four-day event and remembered as a record, and everything with a deadline gets done while preservation does not. Sites disappear through an unrenewed invoice rather than a decision. A related operational resource is available this page .

Four different things get called proceedings and only two survive the organiser: a volume from a named publisher, and a deposit in an institutional repository. A PDF on the conference website lasts until the domain lapses; an abstract book is a programme with summaries. An additional independent source is Springer Nature .

Persistent identifiers are a promise by an organisation, not a property of a file. A DOI works because somebody maintains the resolution record. It does not guarantee the file exists, does not confer quality, and is not always assigned.

Slides fare worse than papers, because no publisher is involved, they are treated as ephemera, and nobody cites them — so nothing visibly breaks when they vanish. Recording is the first line cut from a budget, and its absence is equally invisible.

Your own copy is the only part you control. Five items per event: the paper as a PDF, the slides as a PDF, a screenshot of the programme page showing your talk with the date, the acceptance email, and the full citation written out while the details are on screen. Ninety seconds now against an hour of reconstruction later.

For an organiser the equivalent is an afternoon: export the programme and abstracts as documents, deposit them somewhere with a mandate, publish under the association's permanent identity rather than the edition's, collect slides as files, and hand over a written note of where everything is — because the knowledge disperses faster than the files.

• Archiving an Event

  What to capture while a conference site is still live, and what an organiser can deposit in an afternoon before the team disperses.

• Citing a Conference Paper

  Six elements, gathered at the time. What to do when the venue has vanished, and how to cite a talk that was never written up.

• Persistent Identifiers

  A DOI is a promise by an organisation, not a property of a file. What it does, what it does not, and when it matters.

• Indexing

  Indexed means listed in a database somebody pays for. What it does for discoverability, and why the claim is so easy to fake.

• Link Rot

  Per-edition domains expire, organisers move on, and the record of your presentation goes with them. What survives and why.

• What a Conference Owes

  Six obligations, all cheap, none of them standard. The gap between what an event costs its attendees and what survives it.

• What Proceedings Are

  Four different things get called proceedings, and only two of them survive. Which you are getting is checkable before you submit.

• Recording Talks

  Recording is the first line cut from a conference budget, and the one that most extends what the event produced.

• Where Slides Go to Die

  Slides are the most requested and least preserved conference output. Five places they end up, and only one you control.

• Your Own Copy

  Five items per event, one folder, ten minutes. The only part of the conference record that does not depend on anybody else.