Can a paper be published after being presented at a conference?

[PSJ]

What are the ethical standards in concern to publishing papers that have been previously presented at conferences? Is that ethical? If I want to present a working paper at a conference in order to receive comments and to publish it later, do I need to take some precautions (like, for example, avoiding that the paper is published in the proceedings or something like that)? Please excuse my ignorance in this concern, your help would be greatly appreciated.

[OneArmedEcon]

It is completely normal for a paper to be published after it has been presented. In fact, most papers are.

What's generally frowned upon is presenting a paper after it's been published (the whole point is to solicit feedback in order to improve the paper prior to publication). The other MAJOR no-no is to submit the same (or very, very similar papers) to more than one journal prior to hearing back. That is, if you send the same paper at the same time to multiple generals, that's almost certainly a breach of protocol (it would probably get you barred from publishing it in either, if it were discovered). Now, if you get a rejection (or R&R, but aren't interested in doing the R&R), then you can send it out for review to another outlet. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But you should never have the same paper under consideration at more than one publication outlet at any one time.

On the other hand, you can submit similar papers to multiple conferences (although make sure that the audience will be substantially different, otherwise you're just wasting people's time if you're presenting the same material).

[JBDonges]

The other MAJOR no-no is to submit the same (or very, very similar papers) to more than one journal prior to hearing back.

I have been wondering for a long time why the publication process is organized like that... Wouldn't it be more of a competitive environment for journals if authors could submit their papers to many journals and then decide where to publish if they receive multiple acceptances? And is the answer really, it is like that because journals want to avoid competition?