How to cite papers where the names are sorted? I have a paper with autors A, B, C and D. Their names appear sorted by last name, so the order of the authors does not really say anything about their role in the paper.

When I cite this with the style that I currently use, I obtain “A et al, 2014”. This is logically, but B was the speaker and D is the professor of the workgroup.

Should I now cite this as “A et al”, or change the order of the names and make it “D et al” or “B et al”? The second version only works since I know the roles in the workgroup. With other papers, I would not know how to do this.

I could also just cite it as “[1]” and not worry about that at all …

What would be a good way to deal with this in general?
If the authors are listed as Adams, Brown, Clinton, Dylan, you cannot cite it as Brown et al. The standard thing is to simply cite Adams et al.

If you are one of the authors and you cite it.
Let's say that you are Brown and you now have an article with Eldridge. Then you can write the following:


  ... as was shown by the first author in collaboration with Adams et al. [ABCD14].


This way you cite the paper properly and at the same time, you make it clear that you are one of its authors.