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I finished my B.Sc in CS about 6 month ago and now I am writing a paper for a conference. before when I was a student I put my university and department name below my name as an author. but now I am not a student. I saw somebody put their IEEE membership on the paper something like "member of IEEE Computer society" or something similar, but I am not a member in any society yet!

What I used before:

Sajjad Gerami
Department of Math and Computer Science,
Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran
Email: [email protected]

What I may use now:

Sajjad Gerami
Email: [email protected]

Can I do that? Can I publish a paper just by my name and email (which is a Gmail one) without any institutional affiliation?

Update: For information about email address check these questions:

What should a proper email signature look like for graduate students?

E-mail address to use in publications

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    yes you can. academic papers are not restricted to only those folks having an academic affiliation.
    – Shion
    Aug 12, 2013 at 19:22
  • @Shion thanks. Is there any restriction on using the last faculty name?
    – sajjadG
    Aug 12, 2013 at 19:25
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    You should contact your old department and ask if they consent. That is the only way to know.
    – Peter Jansson
    Aug 12, 2013 at 19:27
  • Why not just list yourself as the only author? Did your professor help you?
    – Jonathan E. Landrum
    Aug 12, 2013 at 20:53
  • @JonathanLandrum Yes she has helped me a lot. She did most of the work for this paper.
    – sajjadG
    Aug 12, 2013 at 23:42

3 Answers 3

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The standard practice is to list the affiliations under which the work was performed. If you performed the work as an undergraduate at your undergraduate institution, then you should continue to list it in work related to that effort. However, you can "update" your address by listing a "current address" along with the old affiliations.

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    Alternatively, you can list yourself without affiliation (since you currently don't have one) but include a footnote/acknowledgment, "Portions of this research were done while the author was a student at Unseen University and a visitor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." What's important is that you acknowledge any institution at which you did work relevant to the paper.
    – JeffE
    Aug 12, 2013 at 23:43
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    @sajjadG: You would list the university as the primary affiliation, and then as a footnote list "Present Address: Street W, Town X, State Y, Country Z."
    – aeismail
    Aug 13, 2013 at 4:21
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    Yes, you must list your former university, either as an affiliation (as aeismail suggests) or as an acknowledgement (as my previous comment suggests). Which alternative is more acceptable/appropriate obviously depends on the standards in your field and how much of the work (not just the writing) you did while you were still a student. What does your coauthor suggest?
    – JeffE
    Aug 15, 2013 at 5:27
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    We wrote the paper when I was a student — Then I think @aeismail is right; you should list the university as your affiliation. (I'm a computer scientist.)
    – JeffE
    Aug 15, 2013 at 13:48
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    Unless the university provided funding you owe them no recognition. Of course, they would like their name attached to a good paper but you don’t owe them this.
    – Squirtle
    Nov 22, 2020 at 0:18
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I have published together with authors that only used their personal home address + email address as contact information, so your second option should not be a problem. You can publish in scientific journals without a formal affiliation.

However, if the work was performed at a previous location (e.g. as a student) where you are not currently working, you should include both the previous affiliation along with the current address (as others have also suggested).

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Give your former university (where you did the work), and add "now Companyname Inc., Newtown)".

It's only fair to tell the reader (instead of hiding it, which might be suspicous), and your boss will likely love the company name to appear, too. Of course you should ask beforehand.

And your email address doesn't matter, because your professor will be the "corresponding author". Right?

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  • Corresponding author not always, if ever, is the professor. Anyway I've published papers with my Gmail mail address and that's OK, not prestigious but OK. And also sometimes you're not working anywhere and doing the research as a freelancer or a graduated student. That was my situation when I asked this question.
    – sajjadG
    Dec 14, 2015 at 7:16
  • I guess it differs between subjects. Often there are e.g. experimental records to be kept, in case someone questioned your work. A professor is best suited to securely store those records, crucial samples, etc. and also have some followup work done to defend the article (with a new one).
    – Karl
    Dec 14, 2015 at 10:32
  • Yes, you're right. for papers with long lifetime that's an absolute necessity.
    – sajjadG
    Dec 15, 2015 at 9:51

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