What is the law regarding the posting of factual information from scientific papers on your own website? ?

Question

I fully intend to add references, but do you also need permission from the author of the paper?

Answer 1

Most technical journals hold the copyright on papers they publish so you need to ask the journal, not the author.  The exception is in cases where the author is a federal government employee (this is true for USA), where the government retains the copyright.  

Generally, if all you are doing is citing information in a format like: "Don and Cherry (J. Aberrant Sports Psychology, 2002, vol. 15, pp. 13:22) provide statistical proof that only European NHL players wear helmets with face shields." then you don't need any permission.  Similarly, if you take data from a paper, and replot it yourself, then my understanding is that you don't need permission either.  However, if you take a figure directly from  Don and Cherry (2002, ibid.) and put it up on your website, especially if you are charging a fee to view it, then you definitely need permission.  

Answer 2

Really depends on your and the authors national copyright laws.

Chances are that if the document has been made public domain, then you wouldn't even technically need to inform the author.

If it's been published into a journal, chances are that it'd be ok - though out of courtesy / safety you might want to contact the author or the journal.

If you are only re-posting select quotes (and not the whole thing verbatim), then I'm 99.999% sure it falls under some sort of "fair-use and education" clause.

The document might have copyright information embedded in it somewhere, look for "public license" or something similar.

Do double check all this out for yourself though!