&gt;In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no &quot;first&quot; or &quot;second&quot; author.<p>Is there any research showing this standard to be fair?  People pay more attention to the first item of a list than to the middle ones, making me think that one&#x27;s position on such a list could have a small benefit.  Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment, but still a factor as long as multiple names on a paper do happen.