On 14-Jan-09 23:51, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>> and if you check you will find the wikipedia
>> article simply includes some paragraphs from the papers.
> 
> Hmm is that legal? What are the usual terms of use for academic papers?

Usually the copyright is owned by the publisher of the journal the paper 
is published in. It used to be so that we were not even allowed to 
include text or illustrations from our own work in another context 
without explicit permission of the publisher. I think we are still not 
allowed to publish pdf versions of our papers on our own website.

One of the reasons why things are a bit changing is that it used to be 
so that the publisher did a final correction, made nice illustrations 
and did the final layout. Nowadays almost all they do is collect the 
word or TeX file and the bitmap and vector illustrations and create the 
physical issue. All other work is done by the authors and the editorial 
board, which is a group of volunteers from the field. Doing 2% of the 
work and getting 100% of the benefit does not seem fair to everyone. 
Hence all sort of initiatives to come to a paperless journal. That in 
itself is influencing the paper business.

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