Revisiting the decay of scientific email addresses

Abstract

Email is the primary means of communication for scientists. However, scientific authors change email address over time. Using a new method, we have calculated that approximately 18% of all authors contact email addresses in MEDLINE are invalid. While an unfortunate number, it is, however, lower than previously estimated. To mitigate this problem, institutions should provide email forwarding and scientific authors should use more stable email addresses. In fact, a steadily growing share already use free private email addresses: 32% of all new addresses in MEDLINE in 2018 were of this kind.