At least where I live the laws are such that publishers can claim copyrights only after they added their “editor” customizations such as publisher logos, page numbers, layout changes etc.
The manuscript that you/the scientist wrote and handed in to the publisher is free of that, the publisher cannot claim any rights at that state. So you always have the right to publish the “unedited” manuscript anywhere including researchgate, arxiv, your website etc.
People shouldn’t have to email you. Put your papers on arxiv.org or your own web site.
A number of journals actually have clauses around how you can’t publish it anywhere else if they accept it.
So you can’t ‘publish’ it in those places, but you can send it privately to people who ask.
People can ask me for it by sending a “GET” request to my web server using the HTTP protocol.
And then those can “leak” it :)
At least where I live the laws are such that publishers can claim copyrights only after they added their “editor” customizations such as publisher logos, page numbers, layout changes etc.
The manuscript that you/the scientist wrote and handed in to the publisher is free of that, the publisher cannot claim any rights at that state. So you always have the right to publish the “unedited” manuscript anywhere including researchgate, arxiv, your website etc.
Usually that’s just for their version. Arxiv the version before it was accepted.