About putting affiliation on a paper or not I see that there are many questions on whether putting/putting how many affiliation(s) on a paper. My situation does not quite fit into all the existing questions, so I am posting my question here.
First of all I am currently working as a part-time lecturer at two different colleges in the same city. I am writing my paper on my own, and neither of them has support for my research (besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers). I am not sure if I should put any of the colleges I am currently working at as affiliations. The reasons of my concern are

The number of courses I teach at these two colleges vary from semester to semester. I expect in some semester I would not have any course to teach at one or even both of the colleges. This means in some coming semesters I may not affiliate with these colleges (for example the summer semester).

I would prefer to put the university I obtained my PhD degree as the affiliation, and write something like &quot;Alumni of XXX University&quot;. But I have not seen this before in any paper, and I am not sure if this is the norm.

I do not object writing myself as independent scholar, but I probably will use the email of the university I obtained my PhD degree in this case. But then I would think why don't I do 2. in above.


Sometimes I think submitting a paper to a journal by a university email address is better than personal email address in the sense that the editor will take it slightly more seriously.
Affiliations are about finding and positively identifying you, as well as also understanding your approach to the problem.
For example (and this is a real case), I would put much less stock in linguistics papers authored by people in the economics department than linguistics.
In the US and Canada, institutions derive so little value from having their name as your affiliation, I don't personally see much of a point in not putting the institutions you're currently at to &quot;stick it to them.&quot; In any case, having a real affiliation looks much better than &quot;Independent Scholar&quot; (perhaps unfortunately).
Commenters indicate this is different in other systems, which I'm not qualified to address. Nonetheless, I would err on the side of including them; not only because of your quote below, but for the benefit of the community and improving your own credibility.

besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers

This is not nothing. I would recommend putting the colleges you currently teach at. If they no longer employ you at the final check, take them off.