Hi All,
At the last IFSO meeting the subject of copyright policies of academic publishers came up for discussion. The basic issue is that many acadmeic publishers require that authors assign copyright to the publisher on the basis that this will allow the publisher to better disseminate the work. Many publishers allow the authors to distribute copies of their work online subject to various restrictions.
The website below documents the policies of many academic journals and publishers and makes it easy to see what you're permitted to do.
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Hope this is useful to some of you,
David