# Offer coauthorship as a reward?

The rule is that math.se does not allow monetary bounties for questions [1,2,3,4,5]. I think that makes sense.

Would it be reasonable/allowed to promise coauthorship of a paper as a "reward" for answering a question? To be clear, I do not mean adding the answerer to a paper that they have nothing to do with. Rather I'm thinking of a situation where the question relates directly to a (potential) paper and the answer is key to that.

More precisely: Would it be acceptable to add a paragraph to the effect of the following to a math.se question?

I need this lemma for the analysis of my algorithm for computing an approximate max-obscurity decomposition of a impotent $$n \times n$$ matrix in $$O(n^2 \cdot 0.935^{\sqrt{\log_2 n}} \cdot \log^{28}(n))$$-time. This is an important problem in my subsubfield of numerical colinear algebra.

Since I have been stuck on this lemma for some time and it is essential to the analysis, I think finding a proof would merit coauthorship of the resulting paper.

• If I saw that paragraph in a question, it would set off my crank alarm so strongly that I would not even consider touching the question.
– user296602
Sep 22 '17 at 20:49
• @user296602 Fair enough. It could be worded more subtly, but I don't see it as unreasonable. Someone working in algorithms might need some help with a combinatorial lemma. I have had non-internet collaborations of this form. Sep 22 '17 at 21:01
• In theory this could be nice, props for asking. Also, basic academic honesty dictates you would acknowledge such help as a matter of course. If the help is relatively major, then coauthorship would be on the table. But the word fantastic you used does trigger my crank alarm, too. If you are a graduate student or more advanced, then this would be ok. But if you seek to prove Collatz conjecture with a bit of high school algebra, and think you just need this little bit help here... Shudders. Sep 22 '17 at 21:02
• Why the downvotes? Sep 22 '17 at 21:04