Joining ArXiv without university affiliation I no longer have a university affiliation and in particular no longer have access to a unviersity email account. I've have had two papers recently accepted for publication in closed access journals (published by Elsevier and Springer). My university affiliation appears on the papers 
because that is where the research was done at the time. I would like to upload the preprints to ArXiv. Both the journals and my co-author are happy with this. There are dire warning on ArXiv of claiming university affiliation when this is not the case (eg. lifetime ban).

My question is how do I join up? Is it even possible for me to do (the previous questions below suggests that it may possible)? Ideally I would like my previous affiliation to show up on the site in some way even if it is marked as 'formerly at university X'.

Note: my co-author could join ArXiv but he doesn't want to (a combination of being retired and not liking technology) and I respect his reasons. 

Previous questions  on Academia.Stackchange that are relevant but that are somewhat different from the present situation:

Can you submit to Arxiv without an institutional affiliation?

Is there something I need to do on arxiv if I lose academic affiliation
Let's distinguish two senses of "affiliation" for arXiv:


The affiliation listed in your arXiv account profile.  The arXiv policies say:


  It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or organizational affiliation. Claimed affiliation should be current in the conventional sense: e.g., physical presence, funding, e-mail address, etc. Misrepresentation of identity or affiliation, for any reason, is possible grounds for immediate and permanent suspension.


So you cannot list your former university as an affiliation in your profile, much as you might wish to, because it is not your current affiliation.  You can list a current employer if you have one and if your employer says it's okay, otherwise you can enter "None" or "Independent" or "Private" or anything else to that effect (or maybe even leave it blank, not sure if that's possible).

Anyway, as GoodDeeds mentioned, it does not appear that your profile affiliation is listed publicly anywhere.
The affiliations listed within the articles you submit to arXiv.  These should, as usual, reflect your affiliation at the time that the work was done.  It is perfectly fine if that is different from your current affiliation as it appears on your arXiv account; this is not misrepresentation in any way, and there is no reason for it to incur a ban or any other negative consequences.  People change affiliations all the time, and there is nothing wrong with submitting an article that you wrote some time ago when your affiliation was different.

In the unlikely event you're questioned about it, you can just explain: "When I wrote the paper I was affiliated with University X; now I am not."  In the even unlikelier event that you're asked to provide verification of this, presumably it won't be hard to do so.


So to summarize: Yes, you can create an arXiv account, but don't use your former university as your affiliation in your profile.  You may need endorsement in order to submit papers; we have several other questions about this process on the site.  You can list your previous affiliation on the title page of those papers as you normally would.