How can corresponding authors protect themselves from academic spam?
We all deal with this curse. Sad as it is, I suspect that your only option is to endure it -- my take is that papers ask you to provide an email address of record in some sort of official way, and playing games like the one you suggest would look inappropriate in this context.
If your email server supports this version of email aliasing, you could set up:
Alternately, if you have your own domain name, you could host your own email:
These are legitimate email addresses for correspondence, and so the journal should not object on that front. You would just know to expect a lot of spam there.
I sometimes read these spams, for the purpose of finding key phrases/words that can be used to filter them out (not delete, in case they are legit), I've noticed the following wording/phrasing:
- Dr [your entire name] or reversed your first + last name, or your initials followed by your full name
- "Greetings of the Day!" or "Greetings and Good Day!"
- followed by "Hope you are doing well"
so far it's working okay for me, it's not fool proof, but it helps cut down clutter a bit.