Based on a study of practices concerning the signing of scientific publications, this article examines the author-function from a pragmatic point of view. The aim is to grasp the variety of elements that researchers mobilize and articulate, during the course of their work, to sign publications. The analysis of these activities affords access to a largely overlooked aspect of the concept of an author: the underlying work that accompanies and supports it. The perspective of this article is therefore twofold: reconsidering the author-function from the point of view of a sociology of action open to the diversity of logics, and specifying the nature of the work that organizes the signing of scientific work.