I wonder how an individual would publish his ideas or his theory on scientific or as matter of fact in any field, if he is not affiliated to any university or firm or any institute?
A researcher can publish scholarly articles even without having affiliations. There are a lot of papers published by researchers representing as 'independent researchers'.
It is mandatory to input the affiliation of authors in any journal management system. The corresponding author can not approve the submission without affiliation details. However, it is possible to author a manuscript without a college or university affiliation. It can be done by creating your own affiliation and using it consistently. For example: ............. Consultancy Services, ......Institute of Research, ......Center for.........Research etc. Nevertheless, no one does experiments at home or fund a project from own pocket. The institution or university or lab where the experiments were conducted should be acknowledged or authors from such places who made real contribution are included to your work. Otherwise, it may create conflict of interest and chances are there to the state of retraction after publication.
The difference between research in the humanities and research in the sciences needs to be taken into account. There is a relatively significant number of independent scholars/researchers in the humanities but very few in the sciences. An article in the sciences without any affiliations at all would be suspicious, although a coauthor without affiliation could be included. But humanities scholars don't all require labs or other institutional resources for their work so such work can in principle be undertaken without an affiliation. However, I've seen some scholars/researchers in both the sciences and humanities use the company or business where they are employed as their affiliation even though it has no connection with the nature of their research. Maybe surreptitious use of a company's photocopier and stationery supplies is affiliation enough to give them a mention. 🤔
Thanks for the response, It was just a passing thought for me while i was uploading my paper. I was just wondering what if an individual has a scientific theory (assuming it to be original and worthy) which he would like to publish, hence i posted the question. As for as couple of answers are concerned, like creating our own affiliations, which would be, in principle defunct except for the purpose of publication, would it be right ethically?
Further couple of pdf's attached in the replies shows that the first/corresponding author do have affiliation.
Yes, definitely you can publish papers without an institution name. You can put your home address. Generally, journals asked affiliation from the authors to confirm the availability of authors if anyone wants to contact you. Anyway your email id is always there. So publish papers with any address you want.