When I lost my university email, my identity as a scientist took an unexpected hit

From ScienceMag:

I had known my contract was ending. I had just completed the final interview for a position abroad and was already preparing for the move. But when a message arrived saying, “Your university email account will be deactivated in 30 days,” I felt strangely unmoored. For early-career researchers like me, the global academic landscape can feel daunting. Permanent positions are scarce, competition is intense, and many of us move from one temporary position to another, often across countries and continents, trying to build a scientific identity. Losing my institutional email address felt like losing a small but vital piece of the scientist I had become.

My academic journey began with a Ph.D. in my home country of China, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Saudi Arabia, and then a series of positions in Australia that were either tied to a grant or temporary. Each move brought expanded research directions, wider collaborations, greater responsibility, and deeper engagement with students, but none came with long-term security. At times, the path forward felt exciting; at others, deeply tenuous. Constant relocation was hard for my family as well, requiring us to adapt to new cities and communities while I tried to maintain momentum in my work.

When I arrived at my most recent position in 2021, I was eager to prove myself. I was appointed to a contract faculty role, responsible for leading a small research group while establishing an independent research program. My days were filled with troubleshooting experiments, writing manuscripts, drafting grant proposals, and learning to mentor my first students. I began to form collaborations across time zones, and my institutional email became the channel through which these relationships took root. Through that address, I submitted manuscripts, coordinated projects, reviewed papers, and answered late-night questions from students testing out their first ambitious ideas. Messages also arrived from prospective Ph.D. students, some of whom would later join my group. My scientific life gathered there, thread by thread.

As my contract neared its end late last year, I focused on preparing for the transition and helping my students and researchers find new positions within the university. Still, the deactivation notice felt like a door closing, faster than I was prepared for.

I scrambled to reroute everything to my personal and former professional addresses until I gained access to a new one. Inevitably, things slipped. I nearly missed invitations to contribute to special issues, and several manuscript review requests went unnoticed until I logged into the submission portals by chance. A former mentee’s request for a reference letter was delayed. Some collaborators’ messages never reached me. One former student who urgently needed help with her manuscript eventually tracked me down through social media. Each disruption reminded me how much of academic life relies on simply being reachable. Writing from a generic address felt different, as though my professional standing had been diminished. Fairly or not, an institutional email address signals belonging—to a department, a university, a scientific community.

Universities often speak of lifelong learning and long-term impact. Moving through different institutions has shown me how meaningful it can be when those values extend even to the smallest details. Years ago, after finishing my first postdoctoral fellowship, I expected my email access to disappear the moment my university ID card stopped working. Instead, it remained active for years. Every so often, former colleagues sent holiday greetings or shared good news. Readers wrote with questions about publications still tied to that email. Those messages reminded me that even though my contract had ended, my place in that community had not. By allowing researchers to keep their institutional email address for at least 6 months after their position ends, universities could better support those of us navigating the uncertain early stages of an academic career.

I am now preparing to settle into a tenure-track position in China. For the moment, I rely on my personal and former institutional addresses for academic tasks while waiting to form new connections through my new professional email. As researchers, we are always building—and rebuilding—a sense of belonging.

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