To expand on why forwarding is common and important in academia, as the IT department explanations in that thread seem to misrepresent how people actually use forwarding: email is arguably the primary form of communication in academia, and important parts of academic practice assume that an address will continue to reach someone, in some way, in perpetuity.
Journals often put email addresses directly in text, even printed text, as the only direct contact information for authors. Scholarly conversations and collaborations often involve emailing people you vaguely know, and might not have emailed for a few years, but you probably have an address for them in your address book or some old emails. Contacting reviewers, or potential committee members for conferences, often involves discussing and cutting and pasting lists of names and email addresses. Unlike in business, in academia people often move between institutions, sometimes on the time scale of a year, while being in the same field, doing the same work, and often working with the same people. They usually want to keep receiving the same emails, and being on the same mailing lists, too.
The way this has typically been handled is through email forwarding: there was the understanding that, at least above a student level, you would continue to be able to forward your email address after you left for as long as you wanted, quite often the rest of your life. People would usually forward from their former institutional email addresses, not personal ones, to either their current institution, or a personal account they used to centralize everything. Thus, people could contact them with whatever old university email address they had, and they could reply with their current email address.
Unfortunately, university IT departments have started to ignore how academic practice differs from corporate practice, and now tend to bring in policies that fit business but not academia (another is the mangling of 'external' emails: most of the important emails we receive are from academics at other institutions). As far as I can tell, my current university essentially treats emails the way a business would, and I'll lose access the moment I decide to leave. They even try to change email addresses over time for people who work with us in changing contexts, without allowing forwarding (student to postdoc, intern to student, etc).
My personal practice is that I will not publish any institutional address unless the institution can give me assurances that my email address will continue to work indefinitely. Sometimes that means I'm listed with a personal address, or an email address for a different institution. Sometimes they are printed in important contexts, and it does look awkward. But that's more an awkwardness for the institution, and I need to be able to ensure that I actually receive emails.
That shift probably happened at the same time when uni IT departments started renting their email from Microsoft / Google who are billing by number of users.
When you have your own server the marginal cost for a forwarding inbox is zero.
It does seem largely related to that, and it is both frustrating and confusing as to why Google and Microsoft have not developed features and plans that consider these problems, despite so heavily pushing their services to universities.
Just yesterday I had several emails back and forth with a student at another university who needed my help with some research software of mine where she eventually realized that, as a student, she simply wasn't allowed to share Google Docs outside her university at all; she had to switch to her personal account. This is on a project her university is funding. And yes, their IT could configure it differently, but so often, the defaults don't fit academia.
I think because MS and others are approached by Universities because of things they promise businesses.
For example: A rather large University in town got hacked. They ran their own infra till then and, as it happens, caught on of the "give me money or your infra is dead" things. Afterwards a lot of not so tech and security savvy folks that where in charge of handling the rebuild and aftermath where eager to shift the blame and damage in the future - especially since said town is located in a GDPR country. In comes MS and gives the same promise as to every other entity: "Buy us and never worry about accrediting your own infra or software solutions. Also conveniently point to us when shit happens".
This is why you see so many grad students and early career faculty with their own domains. Which is a reputational hit on departments against their will.
Which is a reputational hit on departments against their will.
It really is. I have a recent Nature paper where, as the result of the email problem, a reader could easily think I'm actually more connected to a different university. I expect the administration, and publicity people, are not happy about it. But IT won't change their policies, and I'm not going to put an ephemeral email address on a permanent publication.
Comments
To expand on why forwarding is common and important in academia, as the IT department explanations in that thread seem to misrepresent how people actually use forwarding: email is arguably the primary form of communication in academia, and important parts of academic practice assume that an address will continue to reach someone, in some way, in perpetuity.
Journals often put email addresses directly in text, even printed text, as the only direct contact information for authors. Scholarly conversations and collaborations often involve emailing people you vaguely know, and might not have emailed for a few years, but you probably have an address for them in your address book or some old emails. Contacting reviewers, or potential committee members for conferences, often involves discussing and cutting and pasting lists of names and email addresses. Unlike in business, in academia people often move between institutions, sometimes on the time scale of a year, while being in the same field, doing the same work, and often working with the same people. They usually want to keep receiving the same emails, and being on the same mailing lists, too.
The way this has typically been handled is through email forwarding: there was the understanding that, at least above a student level, you would continue to be able to forward your email address after you left for as long as you wanted, quite often the rest of your life. People would usually forward from their former institutional email addresses, not personal ones, to either their current institution, or a personal account they used to centralize everything. Thus, people could contact them with whatever old university email address they had, and they could reply with their current email address.
Unfortunately, university IT departments have started to ignore how academic practice differs from corporate practice, and now tend to bring in policies that fit business but not academia (another is the mangling of 'external' emails: most of the important emails we receive are from academics at other institutions). As far as I can tell, my current university essentially treats emails the way a business would, and I'll lose access the moment I decide to leave. They even try to change email addresses over time for people who work with us in changing contexts, without allowing forwarding (student to postdoc, intern to student, etc).
My personal practice is that I will not publish any institutional address unless the institution can give me assurances that my email address will continue to work indefinitely. Sometimes that means I'm listed with a personal address, or an email address for a different institution. Sometimes they are printed in important contexts, and it does look awkward. But that's more an awkwardness for the institution, and I need to be able to ensure that I actually receive emails.
That shift probably happened at the same time when uni IT departments started renting their email from Microsoft / Google who are billing by number of users.
When you have your own server the marginal cost for a forwarding inbox is zero.
It does seem largely related to that, and it is both frustrating and confusing as to why Google and Microsoft have not developed features and plans that consider these problems, despite so heavily pushing their services to universities.
Just yesterday I had several emails back and forth with a student at another university who needed my help with some research software of mine where she eventually realized that, as a student, she simply wasn't allowed to share Google Docs outside her university at all; she had to switch to her personal account. This is on a project her university is funding. And yes, their IT could configure it differently, but so often, the defaults don't fit academia.
I think because MS and others are approached by Universities because of things they promise businesses.
For example: A rather large University in town got hacked. They ran their own infra till then and, as it happens, caught on of the "give me money or your infra is dead" things. Afterwards a lot of not so tech and security savvy folks that where in charge of handling the rebuild and aftermath where eager to shift the blame and damage in the future - especially since said town is located in a GDPR country. In comes MS and gives the same promise as to every other entity: "Buy us and never worry about accrediting your own infra or software solutions. Also conveniently point to us when shit happens".
Edit: wording
This is why you see so many grad students and early career faculty with their own domains. Which is a reputational hit on departments against their will.
It really is. I have a recent Nature paper where, as the result of the email problem, a reader could easily think I'm actually more connected to a different university. I expect the administration, and publicity people, are not happy about it. But IT won't change their policies, and I'm not going to put an ephemeral email address on a permanent publication.
Very well said. Institutions that only issue ephemeral email addresses cannot reasonably expect such addresses to be included in publications.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) identifiers are an attempt to resolve this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID