I'm a physicist at a national lab. I recently became head of a group at my lab and am currently writing a journal paper with a few of the people in my group.
Is it better to put myself as first author (indicating I was the lead researcher on the project) or last author (indicating I am the group leader/PI)?
Different fields attribute different meanings to authorship order.
In the future, you will be taken up more by your group responsibilities and will have less chance to spend time on research. Thus, first author positions will become rarer, which indicates that you should lean towards it if you have a choice. If you are still in the early stages, you might consider moving writing and researching tasks related to the paper to one of your colleagues and end up functioning as the PI and indicating this by the last position.
