Submitting manuscript with personal email address?

[Shelly8]

I co-wrote a paper with a colleague when we were both at the same institution - Uni 1. He is still there, but I am now at a different institution - Uni 2 (but same city - think Uni of Birmingham and Birmingham City Uni).

Would it be ok to give my personal email address as my contact email? I think it might look a little odd/confusing to give my Uni 2 email when I am going to use Uni 1 as my affiliation?

I think it’s fine, though worth thinking about REF submissions

Although personally I would just add both uni affiliations. Then if you’re returned for ref at uni 2 you can use it

Thank you! I don’t even think it’ll get published to be honest but we’ll see!

I would use my current affiliation, as you want people to be able to contact you. You can put any other affiliation/where the work was carried out in the Acknowledgements. As others have said, you want it to be REFable. No reason to think it won't be published- if not this journal, then elsewhere. I'm writing revisions of a paper, third time around, the paper has really improved though!

Actually, it wouldn't be odd. It's not unusual to see papers where one person's affiliation is listed the same as a few others, but with a little star that then says "current address" and the new department. That way both the place you did the work and your new place get 'credit' for you. If they just want one email address, put the new one.

I'm in a similar position where I could use my previous affiliation (which is at a more prestigious university and where the research was conducted) but I have been advised due to REF to use my current institution affiliation. Is this correct?

I’ll be honest Pete, I don’t even know what REF means, why it’s important or how it can be affected by which institution you put down! (Let’s say I am more of a practitioner than an academic.) But hopefully this bump might attract someone who does know!

I was told it’s good practice to put your affiliation as the one where you carried out the research. I am more than happy to do that in my case because if it weren’t for that institution (and the guidance of my second author), the paper wouldn’t even exist. I have now moved on and would feel a little unfair putting my new institution as my affiliation as they had nothing to do with my research.

The research excellent framework (ref) is a performance management exercise for universities. Each academic, possibly down to grade 6, will have to submit a number of papers, to show what they’ve been doing for he precious 4 years. The papers get assessed by panels of academics as to quality, and universities are rewarded financially for the percentage of ‘excellent’ research they do.

So, if you put your new affiliation on, it may be that you can submit the paper for your new employer. Or, the rules may be that it can only be submitted through the employer at the time of the work, although how they’d judge that I don’t know.

We don’t know yet what the rules would be. Its probably worth contacting your local ref coordinator / hod and asking for guidance.

Definitely put both institutions as affiliations and use current work email address.