Despite many discussions on this blog and elsewhere, I was surprised finally to read the Springer contract. I had submitted a comment on a paper by Frances Egan given at the Oberlin Colloquium last year, and I received the copyedited version with instructions to sign the contract. The part I objected to read as follows:
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. The e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”.
So: I have surrender ownership of my own work, . . .
When your paper goes into production, you get an email asking you to go to the website which gives you a choice of either making the paper Open Access, at a cost of € (or perhaps $) 3000, or accepting the above terms. Obviously, neither option was acceptable to me, but there was no option to communicate with anybody.
So I simply didn't sign. An inconvenience for others in the issue who are being held up, while I receive a series of reminders. I suppose that sooner or later, I'll stop getting automated reminders and actually hear from a person who will refuse to amend the terms of the contract and, when I refuse it, move on without me.
I am not a quick learner, but now I know never again to submit to or agree to publish in a Springer journal.
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