Jan 30, 2017 04:11 AM EST By Eleanor Bright, UniversityHerald Reporter

An email from Academia.Edu sent on Wednesday to one of the authors of published works on the website drew lots of criticism. Dr. Johnson posted the email on his Twitter account. In just a short time, negative reactions flooded in. Dr. Johnson saw that other professors opposed the idea of paying fees to be published. Many believe that their work should be free for public use.

Academia. Edu is an online platform where professors can share their papers with millions of people around the globe. Currently, it has 47 million users. However, it is not a member of any educational organizations. It is a for-profit company. Authors that submit their works to this online platform provide it with free data for profit, according to Forbes. If the proposal is approved, the risk of publishing unreliable works would most likely increase.

Research papers that get recommended because the author paid fees may escape close scrutiny. This will lead to erroneous papers reaching millions of people worldwide.This could be dangerous to users of Academia.Edu who rely on the published papers for information relevant to their study.

In fact, there are researches published that contain errors. This could happen because the author did not discover the error before submitting the paper. Some authors have the decency to retract their work. If the mistake is minor, others would correct it. Many would just keep quiet if the error is not noticed, according to Times Higher Education. This means that there is no guarantee that works published are accurate. This is sad considering that researchers would often use published works from Academia.Edu as their reference.

Authors may opt for non-profit platforms that offer free access to everyone. Universities have online libraries. The school publishes all papers after they were evaluated and judged fit for publication.

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