As part of the 2008-2009 agreement between the Max Planck Society and Springer, any author affiliated with a Max Planck Institute was entitled to publish his/her journal articles open access in Springer's Open Choice program at no additional costs. This applied to all journal articles which were accepted by Springer between January 1st, 2008 and December 31st, 2009. The agreement concerning Open Choice did not extend to articles in Springer book serials.
Even though the agreement between the Max Planck Society and Springer ended on December 31st , 2009, authors whose articles were accepted between January 1^st , 2008 and December 31^st , 2009 still have the possibility to obtain Open Choice status for these articles. If your article was accepted by Springer in the time frame mentioned and you want your article to get the Open Choice status retroactively, please contact Tina Planck.
