Intellectual Property Rights

What are the intellectual property policies concerning academic papers written for conferences or journals ?

I am wondering what are the exact legal terms concerning the Intellectual Property for academic or corporate research papers published in proceedings, presented at conferences or realized within a specific academic assignment ? Who owns the papers ? If this is the university or academic institution, is the author still allowed to diffuse his/her papers freely ? Why do we have to pay for a big proportion of the academic papers found on the Internet ? Where to get more information about this topic ? Thank you !

Public Comments

1. Generally speaking the journal in which a paper is published owns the copyright. They recover their costs (and make a profit) from selling access to the journal.
   
   
   
   The broader questions of ownship of intellectual property and the universities is a huge issue. Each university has its own policy and, typically, a professor agrees to that policy by virtue of signing an employment contract. You could look at various universities' websites to see the variety of cases.