The issue discussed in a New Scientist article about a group of physicists who can’t publish their journal papers because they want to retain the right to also publish derivatives of their work on Wikipedia or other online forums is one faced by many scientists in all disciplines today. It reminds of how the library asked me to make sure that I had the right to use the work I had previously published in my PhD thesis. According to the article,

The physicists were upset after the American Physical Society withdrew its offer to publish two studies in Physical Review Letters because the authors had asked for a rights agreement compatible with Wikipedia. The APS asks scientists to transfer their copyright to the society before they can publish in an APS journal. This prevents scientists contributing illustrations or other “derivative works” of their papers to many websites without explicit permission.

This will continue to be a problem until all scientific journals update their policies to account for the new methods of distributing information digitally and especially online.

Read “Physicists slam publishers over Wikipedia ban.“