Surprised. Disappointed. Violated.

Those are some of the words that scholars have used over the past few days when told that their work was being sold online without their knowledge. The scholarly papers and presentations have been available for a fee through All Academic, a Web site hired by academic associations to handle submissions for conferences.

All Academic doesn’t just provide a database service, however. In some cases, it also claims the right to sell papers presented at those meetings online. But now, following complaints by professors, the company says it will discontinue the practice.

“I’m clearly sorry that people weren’t aware that we were charging to defray some of the cost,” said Steve Stolp, one of All Academic’s founders.

From the beginning, according to Mr. Stolp, scholars have had the option not to make their papers available. But more than a dozen scholars contacted by The Chronicle said they had no idea their papers were being sold.

And many, like Matthew B. Johnson, an associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York, were not happy about it. A paper Mr. Johnson co-wrote was presented at last year’s meeting of the American Society of Criminology and, until this week, was available for sale on All Academic.

“I’m troubled by that,” he said. “I’ve been misled. I certainly wouldn’t have given permission if I had known about it.”

One problem, scholars say, is that they don’t receive royalties from the sale of their papers. In addition, there is concern that if the paper is published online, that may interfere with later submission to a journal.

“The fact that, without my knowledge, these papers are not only being made available to the public, but are done so at a price is disturbing to say the least,” Richard N. Pitt, an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, wrote in an e-mail message.

The company charges customers $7 for the first paper they buy and $3 for each additional paper. The fee is an attempt, Mr. Stolp said, to cover storage and bandwith costs. If scholars want their papers taken off the Web site entirely, he said they should contact the company. “We didn’t know that people didn’t know and were upset by it,” he said. “We are trying to create a place where scholars can come and do research.”

All Academic decided on Wednesday to stop selling papers after a message was posted on the Communication, Research and Theory Network e-mail list. The message was from Timothy R. Levine, a professor of communication at Michigan State University who found one of his papers on the site. Mr. Levine said he had talked to about 20 colleagues, none of whom knew that their papers were being offered for sale. —Thomas Bartlett