Papers co-authored by many people can be signed together, but signing is a key issue, which needs special attention and requires the author to clearly grasp the basic signing standards. The two key roles of the author's signature are the correspondent and the first author. The correspondent is the chief commander of the paper publication, and the first author is the chief executive of the paper publication. These two types of authors play a key role in the publication of papers, so these two types of authors have the most obvious effect on personal promotion.

It is difficult for many people to distinguish between the correspondent and the first author. Generally speaking, the first author's participation and contribution to the article is the highest, while the correspondent author is in general control of all the matters published in the paper, so it is easy to distinguish.