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The paper was written and submitted when I was in Institution A. After (many) years, the paper is accepted when I am in Institution B.

Which address shall I put on the paper?

The current address (Institution B) will soon expire since I will have to move somewhere else. So when the paper will be finally published online / on paper, neither A or B is valid address.

7-adic
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    This is probably a better question for Academia.SE. Normally you list A as affiliation and B as current address. – Nate Eldredge May 02 '17 at 19:04
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    There are two things you can do; you can list your original address and then list the current address labeled as "Current address". Alternatively, in either the introduction or the final paragraph, you can write that the paper was written and submitted while you were in Instituton A, and completed/accepted while you were at Institution B, and list your current address (labeled as "current address"). – Arturo Magidin May 02 '17 at 19:11
  • The current address (Institution B) will soon expire since I will have to move somewhere else. So when the paper will be finally published online / on paper, neither A or B is valid address. – 7-adic May 02 '17 at 19:12
  • @7-adic : In that case, I don't think it matters too much what address you put on the paper, but I would agree with Arturo Magidin and Joe Silverman that you should add an acknowledgment somewhere that gives due credit to Institutions A and B for providing some support for your work. – Timothy Chow May 03 '17 at 15:42
  • Institution B did nothing in this paper. How about just using the old address of Institution A? That would be acknowledgement for sure? – 7-adic May 04 '17 at 01:06
  • @7-adic: if you did no work on the paper while at Instituiton B, then there is no need to mention institution B; however, if you did do some work on it while there (including modifying the paper to account for referee comments, but not including just minor copyediting after acceptance), then institution B should still be mentioned. If you know where you will be when it is published, then list that as "Current address" in addition to Instituiton A. Otherwise, as Joe Silverman says, the important point is to have an e-mail address that will continue to work. – Arturo Magidin May 08 '17 at 00:09

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The primary purpose of the address, in "days of yore," was so that people could write to you to ask for a reprint and/or start a correspondence with you about your paper. And most institutions were willing to forward snail-mail if you kept them informed of your current address. All of that is pretty much irrelevant now. So I think the primary answer to your question is to make sure that your address includes an email address that will not expire, regardless of your moves. I know many mathematicians who use a gmail address for that purpose. If instead you use the email address at your current institution, make sure that they will forward email to whatever new address you give them. Beyond that, the other advice on how to list the institution(s) seems reasonable, since institution A deserves some credit for supporting your work, as possibly does institution B if, say, you revised the paper while there.

Joe Silverman
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  • I think nowadays it is anyway common to google for someone before contacting them by email for the first time -- this makes it much less important what address is printed in a paper, and whether it is still up-to-date. – Stefan Kohl May 02 '17 at 19:33
  • @StefanKohl Good point, which means that the address in the paper is mostly irrelevant. But the part that is least irrelevant is the email, I think. And although I generally do google before contacting, I have been known to copy and paste an email address from a ArXiv article that I'm reading (which I'll admit is laziness on my part), so it is helpful if that address hasn't expired. There's also the issue that for some common names, it may not be immediate to find their home page, so it certainly can't hurt to include a permanent email address. – Joe Silverman May 02 '17 at 19:41
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    @StefanKohl : I have found that Google doesn't always give me the email address I want, especially if the person in question no longer has an academic position, or has taken some (anti-spam) measures to make it harder to find their email address, so I always appreciate seeing an email address in a paper. – Timothy Chow May 03 '17 at 15:46
  • @TimothyChow: Sure, as far as it concerns relatively recent papers. -- Though if an author's recent contact details cannot be found online, I'd rather assume that they are either not alive any more or prefer not to be contacted for whatever reason -- regardless of what address is given in a paper from, say, 1990, 1970 or 1950. – Stefan Kohl May 03 '17 at 16:30