Who is more important in an article, the corresponding author or the first author? It seems no one can answer this question certainly. In most people's mind, the first author is the most important author in one article. He/she should be responsible for the whole process from material collecting, experiemental design, data collecting and analysis, and the paper writing while the corresponding author is only responsible for the correspondence with the edition boards. Usually, the corresponding author is mostly the supervisor or the project director who makes suggestions on your experiment, data analysis or paper writing. Now, many units take great importance on the corresponding author. Most units hold equal importance to the first writer and the corresponding author. But the interllectural property of the paper belongs to the corresponding author and his representative unit. Therefore, from this point, the corresponding author seems to be more important. If your article is mostly done by yourself, and especially based on your own creative idea, it's better for you to be both the first author and the corresponding author. I know many people in fact have no choice when involed in the issue of authorship.
There are many discussions on the issue of the first author and the corresponding author. Follows are three links obtained from the internet.
从美国化学学会会刊(JACS)主编给中国通讯作者的一封信谈起 We received your submitted article on 04/26/2004. Please have each of your co-authors directly send us an individual message from their own email address. In each message, that particular author should include the following confirmation statements: 1. I verify that I have seen and have approved the submitted manuscript; 2. I consent to having my name appear in the list of authors and, thereby, take responsibility for the results contained in the manuscript. 3. I have read and am in compliance with the ACS Ethical Guidelines: https://paragon.acs.org select: Ethical Guidelines http://www.pubs.acs.org/instruct/ethic.html, We look forward to receiving individual messages from each of your co-authors, so that processing may continue on your manuscript. Sincerely, Peter J. Stang （1）谁应该是作者 《英国皇家化学学会：发表论文的道德准则》 As a minimum, authors should take responsibility for a particular section of the study. The award of authorship should balance intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study against the collection of data and other routine work. If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship. All authors must take public responsibility for the content of their paper. The multidisciplinary nature of much research can make this difficult, but this may be resolved by the disclosure of individual contributions. 作者至少要对研究的一个特定的部分负责。确定作者应该基于平衡考虑他对研究工作的构思、设计、分析和撰写所做的脑力贡献，而不是数据的收集或者其它常规的工作。如果没有什么任务可以归功于某个个人，那么这个人就不应该成为作者。所有的作者必须对他们的论文内容负起社会责任。这样做对于许多研究工作因其多学科性质而会有困难，但是这个问题可能通过明示每个作者的贡献来解 决。 （2）谁不应该是作者 哪些人最容易混入作者名单？ 1.资助者，包括实验室的导师。 2.行政领导。 3.仅仅是收集数据，没有参加分析，讨论，撰写等等的实验员。 4.和资深作者或主要作者有特殊关系的人。
通讯作者的具体责任 《英国皇家化学学会：发表论文的道德准则》 9. To give due acknowledgement to all workers contributing to the work. Those who have contributed significantly to the research should be listed as co-authors. On submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author attests to the fact that those named as co-authors have agreed to its submission for publication and accepts the responsibility for having properly included all (and only) co-authors. The corresponding author signs a copyright licence on behalf of all the authors. 给予所有对此工作有贡献的人员恰当的承认。那些对研究工作有显著贡献的人应该被列入共同作者。在投稿时，通讯作者要确认所有被列入作者名单的人都同意投稿，承担包括所有共同作者并且仅仅包括共同作者的责任。通讯作者代表所有作者签署版权证书。 谁应该是通讯作者？ 1，一般是比较资深的研究人员。 2，没有任何学术地位，职务的要求。学生，博士后都行，只要他们能够负起责任。 3，年轻人做通讯作者，有利于培养他们的独立工作能力。
Link Three:
Difference between Corresponding author and First author and what are all their responsibilities? 通讯作者与第一作者的区别以及各自的责任
First author is usually the student /researcher who has undertaken the research work. First author is often also referred as the presenting author. He /She is responsible for doing the research practically along with the co-authors who might assist him/ her in the research work or might be the colleagues from the same work group. He is also responsible for preparing the manuscript and analyzing the data. Corresponding author is usually the senior author who provides the intellectual input and designs and approves the protocols to be followed in the study. He is responsible for the manuscript correction, proof reading, whole correspondence during the paper submission, handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts upto the acceptance of the manuscripts. This is the usual practice in most cases.
In some cases, when the work is done in collaboration with some other institutes, the actual researcher or the first author and corresponding author remains the same, but co-authors increase depending on the number of helping hands in the paper along-with the senior collaborator or senior scientist with whom you liaised with.
I would like to focus on other side also. There are some institutes also where corresponding author becomes the first author also. The person doing the work or the actual researcher/ Student becomes the second author or even a co-author also. This is, in my opinion, unethical or injustice on part of the actual researcher/ student. But this practice is prevalent in some institutions and the students are bound to stick to it being the beginners in most cases. Another situation which I have seen in some institutes is that the head of the institute or the director is a part of every paper arising from that institute, no matter it is relevant with him/her or not.
So this are the practices prevalent now-a-days regarding the inclusion of names in research papers. Hope you have a better idea of the roles and responsibilities as you mentioned in your question as well as the prevailing scenario.
First author is the one who carries out the bulk of the experiments, while having an important contribution to experimental design, data analysis, interpretation and writing of the paper. The corresponding author is in most cases the principal investigator. He has major contribution in the design of the work, he will supervise experiments, he will verify or even contribute to data analysis and most importantly he will take over most of data interpretation and writing of the manuscript. Of course variations to the above scheme may occur.
Difference between Corresponding author and First author and what are all their responsibilities?
The meaning of 'first author' differs between subjects and between geographical area. It's therefore better to follow international guidelines and use a contributorship statement to indicate who did what work and how much of it (see http://www.icmje.org/ and www.ease.org.uk/ for access to such guidelines). The 'the corresponding author' is the person who acts as the link between editor and coauthors. The term 'author for correspondence' should really be used for 'the point of contact with outside researchers'. (Although I know that these terms are frequently confused, even by some journals.)
