Springer denies scientist access to her own research

The modern scientific method goes something like this:

1. Obtain grants to fund your research.
2. Conduct research.
3. Write up results of your research.
4. Submit your written work to a scientific journal.
5. Sign a copyright transfer giving up all rights to your work.

The last step may sound crazy if you're not an academic, but we usually don't think twice about it. After all, the publisher you're giving the rights to would always give you access to your own work if you needed it.

Right?
Wrong.
The following letter from Dianne O'leary, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, is reproduced here with permission.

From: Dianne O'Leary
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:42:18 -0400
Subject: Rejected Springer reprint request

On September 9, I wrote to Springer asking for a pdf file of one of my
papers:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1016614603137
Wang and O'Leary, Adaptive use of iterative methods in
predictor-corrector interior point methods for linear programming
Numerical Algorithms, 25 (2000) 387-406.

It took until October 8 for them to answer my request, and they
decided that I was not entitled to the pdf file of my own paper.

This doesn't seem to be the way to maintain the good will of the
community. They might have the legal right to make this decision, but
it seems to me that it is bad logic and bad business, since they rely
on us to provide, without financial compensation, the content for
their journals and the refereeing of other manuscripts.

My university does not subscribe to this journal -- too expensive --
so I was wondering if anyone had an idea of how I can obtain this pdf
file.

Thanks much.

Dianne O'Leary

One more reason to be careful about the journals you submit to.  SIAM, for instance, allows the author not only unlimited use for personal purposes, but also to post the final version of the article on his/her institutional webpage.
By the way, Prof. O'Leary now has over 200 copies of her article -- so there's no need to indundate her inbox with more.  And apparently someone from Springer has now (on Oct. 19) given in and provided her official access to her article.

Update from Prof. O'leary on Nov. 1:

In response to my posting of trouble getting a pdf file of one of my Springer-published papers, I received over 200 messages of support and advice.  It is a great community! M.J.D. (Mike) Powell was inspired to contact Springer, and in response, I very promptly received the pdf file (which I have learned that Springer is willing to supply to every author) and legal permission to post it on my website (which Springer does not ordinarily give).  This gives me exactly what I wanted, and I am grateful. I had sent my original request to Springer from the website of the article, clicking the "permissions and reprints" button at http://www.springerlink.com/content/p158q2276n7u0173/.  Apparently, this gives the wrong outcome if you are the author.  The people who processed my request did not forward it to the appropriate person, the editor, found using the "contact" button on the journal's homepage. A week after my posting, Claude Brezinski, editor-in-chief of Numerical Algorithms, wrote me saying that my message might be interpreted as criticism of him and the editorial board of the journal.  I meant no such criticism. Elizabeth Loew of Springer has been very helpful in trying to solve the problems and clarify the issues.  It is in the current Springer copyright agreement that authors cannot post the journal pdf files to their own websites.  Authors are allowed to email the pdf to colleagues. As Steve Vavasis noted last week, authors who care about making their articles more available need to look into mechanisms such as the SPARC copyright addendum: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml See also the SHERPA/RoMEO site that provides the copyright policy for many journals: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo