Springer’s copyright agreement is, according to Springer, compatible with posting your article on the arXiv under the CC-BY-0 license
It is far from clear to me that Springer’s copyright agreement (quoted below) is compatible with posting your paper on the arXiv under the CC-BY-0 license. Happily, a Springer representative has just confirmed for me that this is allowed:
Let me first say that the cc-by-0 license is no problem at all as it allows for other publications without restrictions. Second, our copyright statement of course only talks about the version published in one of our journals, with our copyright line (or the copyright line of a partner society if applicable, or the author’s copyright if Open Access is chosen) on it.
At least if you are publishing in a Springer journal, and more generally, I would strongly encourage you to post your papers to the arXiv under the more permissive CC-BY-0 license, rather than the minimal license the arXiv requires.
As a question to any legally-minded readers: does copyright law genuinely distinguish between “the version published in one of our journals, with our copyright line”, and the “author-formatted post-peer-review” version which is substantially identical, barring the journals formatting and copyright line?
from Secret Blogging Seminar
