How to submit a paper without being backed up by my employer
&quot;Independent Scholar&quot; or &quot;Independent Researcher&quot; is the way to go (as also mentioned by Arno in the comments).
According to LENS, the affiliation &quot;Independent Scholar&quot; seems to be slightly more prevalent than &quot;Independent Researcher&quot;, with 3.085 versus 2.426 occurrences between 2015 and the end of Nov. 2020.
(Just for the record, the term &quot;Independent Scientist&quot; was used only 31 times in the same date range; and the earlier centuries' label &quot;Gentleman Scientist&quot; seems to be completely outdated by now.)
Here at Academia StackExchange, there is also an independent-researcher tag (here).