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[mon_afternoon]

I'm a PhD student still completing coursework.  This semester, I took a class outside of my department, in a very applied/professional-oriented department.  The professor intends to put all our final papers on a website related to his research and the theme of this class. For many of my classmates, this is fantastic as it gives their work exposure.  However, I'm concerned this might preclude me from seeking to work on this paper for publication or a conference in the future.   Is this something I need to worry about?

[larryc]

Probably not, particularly if the published version would be substantially different from what goes on the web.

I am convinced that academics fear of putting their unpublished work online is overblown and hugely self-defeating. I am a fairly active history blogger/tweeter and have published one book and a handful of articles. I am no star of the profession and not likely to become one, but whatever reputation I do have has come far more from the blog and other virtual endeavors than it has from printing my words on dead trees. Put yourself out there.

[bacardiandlime]

I agree with LarryC.

Heck, I put drafts of my work online (googledocs) precisely to get critiques from other people in my field, before I submit them for publication. I've found it to be very helpful.

[totoro]

This is very discipline specific. In economics or physics it is totally expected to put up working papers on RePEc and preprints on ArXiv. In biology it can prevent publication. Paleontology bloggers won't even talk about the content of conference presentations they saw before those are published in journals. Some other disciplines are somewhere in between without a tradition of pre-publication but not having problems with it. There is a website called Sherpa-Romeo that provides information on the policy at each journal.