Physics Journal May Reconsider Wikipedia Ban

I don't believe in imaginary property writes "The flagship physics journal Physical Review Letters doesn't allow authors to submit material to Wikipedia, or blogs, that is derived from their published work. Recently, the journal withdrew their acceptance of two articles by Jonathan Oppenheim and co-authors because the authors had asked for a rights agreement compatible with Wikipedia and the Quantum Wikipedia. Currently, many scientists 'routinely do things which violate the transfer of copyright agreement of the journal.' Thirty-eight physicists have written to the journal requesting changes in their copyright policies, saying 'It is unreasonable and completely at odds with the practice in the field. Scientists want as broad an audience for their papers as possible.' The protest may be having an effect. The editor-in-chief of the APS journals says the society plans to review its copyright policy at a meeting in May. 'A group of excellent scientists has asked us to consider revising our copyright, and we take them seriously,' he says."

Comments

Re:Maybe I'm in the wrong field

[rangek]

I've published to professional journals (as a academic historian) before, and I've never had to surrender copyright to the journal (agreement was strictly for publishing rights).

For chemistry:

The undersigned, with the consent of all authors, hereby transfers, to the extent that there is copyright to be transferred, the exclusive copyright interest in the above cited manuscript, including the published version in any format (subsequently called the "work"), to the American Chemical Society....

From http://pubs.acs.org/copyright/forms/copyright.pdf

For physics:

Copyright to the above-listed unpublished and original article submitted by the above author(s), the abstract forming part thereof, and any subsequent errata (collectively, the "Article") is hereby transferred to the American Physical Society (APS)...

From http://forms.aps.org/author/copytrnsfr.pdf, which interestingly enough wouldn't let me cut-and-paste without using a hacked version of xpdf. :P