I feel your pain, to quote a famous Arkansan. In general, the authors of a paper don't get any direct financial benefit from a journal article. The copyright claim by publishers is a misguided attempt to protect their "content." Granted that it costs a lot of money to publish a journal— it is not unheard of to make an author pay several hundred dollars to cover the cost of publishing a color illustration in some journals with limited circulation.

I think that copyrighting scientific papers is just plain wrong. When I was at UNC my research was covered by grants from the US government and the facilities furnished by the state of North Carolina; in other words, by the public. For a journal publisher to claim ownership for the work I or my grad students did is a travesty, but you have to publish and it is often the most prestigious publications that enforce such rules.