Recycling gone too far
Tell us your horror story, what happened?
A newly starting researcher at an undisclosed, but nearby, university received all he needed to start his career. This included a laptop an e-mail address and the directions to the nearest coffee machine. He got his research off to a good start which eventually led to his first publication! Excited about his first paper at his new workplace he decided to check if Google Scholar was already aware of his new publication. Surprisingly, not only had Google already found his publication, it already had several publication listed for his 鈥榥ew鈥 e-mail address鈥 How could this be?
It appears the university had recycled the e-mail address he was given, from a previous researcher. As expected, the previous e-mail address owner had already published using this e-mail address! To fix this, a new e-mail address was needed, but fixing the incorrect citations on Google Scholar was not an easy task鈥 Even more scary, if the new researcher harvested any malicious intent; he could have taken over all the accounts the previous researcher had created using the 鈥楩orgot password鈥 option on his 鈥渞ecycled鈥 e-mail address.
How long ago was it?
Less than a year ago
How was this solved?
Partly by creating a new mail address.
How could this horror be avoided?
Do not recycle mail addresses!
Data Horror Week
For advice to prevent you from making the same mistake, contact info.rdm@uu.nl or go to our website.
This Data Horror Week is an initiative from the RDM Support desks at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视, TU Delft, Leiden 木瓜福利影视 and Twente 木瓜福利影视. For more stories, go to the national . To stay up to date on all the horror stories this week, follow us on !