Springer Verlag Adding Insult to Injury

Springer Verlag by way of its incompetence to properly edit manuscripts has been a royal pain in my butt for a long-time. In the most egregious example, one of their editors changed the title of what was a crowning paper of many years of research work. He turned “open source” into “open course”, completely altering the focus of the paper as suggested by the title. I was not given a final proof-reading chance after that change and only found out about it when I saw the paper on their website. When I complained, Springer steadfastly refused to change the title to the correct original wording and only filed an Erratum that everybody thereafter of course ignored.

I’m getting a steady stream of spam emails. They all start with the words that because I’m the reputed author of that “open course” paper, I would want to (a) submit a paper to a journal, (b) attend their conference, or (c) put my head into a shredder. I don’t know where these folks get the precise information they address me with from; I don’t think that you can easily screen-scrape it. Is Springer selling this data? In any case, adding insult to injury, I just received another of these offers from a third party:

We are writing to you because of your [“open course”] paper. We would like to congratulate you on your publication. […] we thought you might be interested in receiving our complimentary quarterly newsletter. You can use the information in the newsletter to assist you in writing and publishing your manuscripts.

Right. Get help in writing and publishing papers. How ironic. Maybe if I had paid Springer extra, they would not have ruined my paper? If there ever was indignation to be had, this is it.

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