Inacademic publishing, the lead authororfirst author is the first named author of a publication such as a research articleoraudit.
Academic authorship standards vary widely across disciplines. In many academic subjects, including the natural sciences, computer science and electrical engineering, the lead author of a research article is typically the person who carried out the research and wrote and edited the paper. The list of trailing co-authors reflects, typically, diminishing contributions to the work reported in the manuscript. Sometimes, journals require statements detailing each author's contributions to be included in each publication.[1] In other disciplines (such as mathematics) however, authors are typically listed alphabetically rather than by contribution.[2][3]
The proportion of multi-author papers has increased in recent decades, reflecting increasingly complex multi-investigator research projects,[4] as well as the "publish or perish" culture of academic performance evaluation.