Entering edit mode
10.5 years ago
Pierre Lindenbaum
164k
https://github.com/blog/1840-improving-github-for-science (...) Research accounts on GitHub We also know that as a scientific researcher, sometimes you're going to want to work privately. That's why we've created a discount where individual academic researchers can receive a free micro plan with 5 private repos, while research groups can receive a free silver plan with 20 repos. To set up a research account on GitHub, first associate an academic email address with your account and then request a GitHub Education discount.
Very good, thank you for pointing it out! However, note that the free account is only for two years, after which you will have to pay or lose your repos. This is similar to what happened for the Dropbox space race.
thank you for noticing the duration ...
You don't lose the repo's, they become locked when your account is downgraded to a free account. You can then make them public if you chose, which restores access, or request limited access to move them off the account. You can also of course re-upgrade to a paid account.
I haven't seen a definitive answer one way or another but it I believe you can also re-request your educational discount. An Github employee suggested that on a related StackOverflow question (two years ago) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12361700/what-happens-to-a-github-student-accounts-repositories-at-the-end-of-2-years
aside from this, my university installed https://www.gitlab.com/ and we're very happy with it.
Any indication of how they validate an academic email address? Just .edu, .ac or more options available?
Definitely more options available. Here in Canada most of our Universities just use .ca and something that makes sense for the school (mine is @dal.ca for instance) and it is recognized specifically as an email address for Dalhousie University. I'm guessing they have a database of the most common Universities domains.