When Scott F. Johnson got an email on Wednesday from Academia.edu asking if he was interested in paying “a small fee” to get his future papers considered for recommendation by the website’s editors, he thought it was a scam.
Mr. Johnson, an assistant professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, took a screen shot of the email, from Adnan Akil, product director of the online platform, and posted it on Twitter to see what others thought.

It turns out that other professors on Twitter had a lot to say, and none of it supported the idea that Academia.edu — a social network for researchers to share academic work — would begin to charge for consideration by its editors. The message went viral overnight and spawned a storm of back-and-forth conversations with Mr. Akil, with many critics saying such a proposal would be very “problematic” at the least.
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