The text you are reading at this moment, the Email Guide for Scientists (or short: Email Guide) lays down a set of rules that will be helpful when writing and reading emails.

The Email Guide is part of the Survival Guidebook for Scientists (from now on the Survival Guide). Occasionally there might be general referrals in the Email Guide to other parts of the Survival Guide. However, the Email Guide is self-contained. For completeness we present here the names of all the guides that together constitute the Survival Guide:

• – Presentation Guide for Scientists, or short: Presentation Guide; as an addendum to the Presentation Guide we have published the Example Guide

• – Email Guide for Scientists, or short: Email Guide

• – Writing Guide for Scientists, or short: Writing Guide

• – Survival Guide for Junior Scientists, or short: Junior Guide

• – Survival Guide for Senior Scientists, or short: Senior Guide

Goal of the Email Guide

The idea of this tutorial is to instruct readers how to (i) spend less time on their email communication, (ii) send fewer emails, (iii) receive less of them. And (iv) how to make the sent emails more concise and more informative.

The Email Guide is meant to make your email communication as efficient as possible. The major goal when writing emails is to send crystal-clear email messages and simultaneously minimize the time spent on those email messages. If you write your emails with care, the receiver will be very pleased. Just by merely glancing at the email sent by you he should already know what it is all about.

Discussion groups

The author of the Email Guide, that is me, has over 25 years of experience in reading and writing email messages. In my opinion many of the hints in this guide are quite helpful for scientists.

But it is also your guide: if you do not agree with one, some, or many of my hints, post your own ideas at the weblog www.sciencesurvivalblog.com

If more people agree with you, the Email Guide will be improved by implementing your advice.

Target group

The target group I had originally in mind was students – undergraduate and graduate – and postdocs in the exact sciences. From experience I discovered that more senior scientists can also benefit from studying the set of instructions laid out in this Email Guide.