This tells the reader exactly who conducted the research, and wrote the paper. There are several things that go into this element of the paper:
First, make certain that the name of the first author appears in a consistent style. In my case, I chose 'Sten Odenwald', but I could just as easily have selected 'S.F. Odenwald' or 'Sten F. Odenwald'. In compilations of citations for this paper, these 3 possibilities will be considered different even though they are the same individual. The first author should try to adopt a consistent style throughout their publication life so that if someone does a citation search, they capture all of your publications under one name in the search. For myself, I have used all three styles in the past, not realizing that citation searches would ever be conducted. Oh well!
Note that no prefix such as 'Dr.' is used. It is assumed that you have the qualifications as an astronomer to write and publish articles, so this bit of information is redundant.
The majority of research papers involve collaborations by 2 or more astronomers. In, for instance, the January 10, 1994 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, out of 43 papers, 6 were produced by one astronomer, 14 were produced by two astronomers, 10 by three astronomers and the rest by 4 or more. The fraction of papers in this issue produced by one or two astronomers is about 50 percent.
You need to work out with your collaborators the ordering of names in the paper. For papers with more that 3 names, only the first name will appear in a citation of the articles by other astronomers as 'Jones et al. (1985)' so the first name is the name of the person who led the effort. It is also assumed that if a person's name appears in an author list, that the person made a significant contribution to the research. Do not pad your paper with dead wood. If all that the person did was to proof read the manuscript, add their name to the 'Acknowledgment' section. If they caught a major error that substantially impacted the research, and if they want to be included in the author list, it is probably courteous to add them.
RETURN to the Paper topic index.