Losing your academic email cuts you off from the scientific community

I haven’t had a job in a university for a while, and I’m realizing how much I cannot do and how many opportunities I am missing because I don’t have a university email address.

One of the biggest issues is Google Scholar.

Google Scholar still has my last institutional email from last year. I could leave my email blank, but I don’t want to, because “Unverified profiles can’t appear in search results.” That is bad for me professionally – I want people to be able to find my papers in Google Scholar search. It’s also, it must be said, bad for research more generally. I wonder how many people realize that profile search are filtered by institutional emails.

if journal editors find my Google Scholar profile, they will only see my old email. If they send a request to that email for me to review a manuscript, they won’t get a response. Given how many editors complain about how they “just can’t find people willing to peer review some articles,” I wonder how many potential reviewers are lost because they change email addresses?

Other examples:

Pubpeer won’t accept a Gmail address in their signup.

ResearchGate warns you about deleting an institutional email but allows you to do it.