What email to use for corresponding author on publications when institution is not permanent? What is the best email to use as corresponding author when publishing academic papers as a graduate student, postdoc, pre-tenured faculty or other potentially non-permanent position where your email address may change in the next few years? I know many academic institutions will let you turn your email address into a forwarding address, but in cases where this is not possible and your email address will cease to exist when/if you leave, what is the solution? Using something like a gmail address seems practical but rather unprofessional--or is it?
It has become quite obvious by now that most researchers are on precarious employment for an extended period of time when starting their career.

As mentioned by Michael and Mark, it is very common to find gmail email addresses in scientific publications. I believe that nobody would find that objectionable.

Tips, anyway:


Do not use party.dinosaur@gmail.com but a variation on firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
The issue of perenniality remains: GMail deletes inactive accounts after some time. Check their tools to address this issue: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
Self-hosted email (i.e. firstname@lastname.tld) is also subject to cancellation if you don't renew your domain/email host.
If you maintain a web presence, your email will be easily findable in the future.


As a kind of "non-requested bonus", I would advise to register an ORCID and have your paper include it (most publishers will include it by now). The ORCID is a unique permanent researcher ID, see their website. On your profile, you can have a list of all your publications and also of your web page. You can include several URLs, meaning that you can list your current institution homepage, your personal hosted homepage, your google scholar account, etc. The ORCID page will be permanent, easily findable and you can update it.

EDIT: you can also list an email (at your preference) on your ORCID profile.