Pre-electronic publications

Some friends and I have been debating a topic, and we have decided we would like more opinions. Take a research scientist who was actively publishing in scientific journals in the 1980s and 90s, and whose contracts did not specify anything about electronic versions of the articles. The same scientist, of course, has lost the copies of the publishing contract (but not the articles). Is he or she free to publish these articles on his web site? Is his/her institution free to place them in an institutional repository? What if they have changed institutions (schools) since publishing the article? Thank you,
-Marcia Keyser
-Drake University
Received on Fri Jul 21 2006 - 23:30:45 GMT