Authorship, and order of authors Currently I am writing a paper with several collaborators; although I am the primary author to this (I have done a large (>85%) majority of the work and have actually written the paper) my last name begins with W. I feel obligated to include their names on the paper, however, I fear that doing so will degrade my ownership of the paper. Where should I mention them in the paper?
 A: If they are co-authors on the paper then add them alphabetically as is customary for math journals.  Otherwise if they are not co-authors then just mention them in acknowledgements.  If you want to record the author contributions, you can add this as a separate section after acknowledgements.  You can also list yourself as the "corresponding author" if you want to show that you have more ownership of the paper.
Edit: Although I don't disagree with most of the other answer, I think that the role of corresponding author will often be interpreted as having more significance than simply as the co-author with the most stable email address.  As in one of the comments on the question here I've shared the experience of being co-author on a paper where the PI was suspiciously eager to be corresponding author.  I'm not sure how widespread is the interpretation like 'corresponding authorship signals primary authorship when the author order is alphabetical and there is no other indication' but I think it's good to at least be aware that some people will interpret it in this way.
A: I completely disagree with "guest"s answer. It is quite possible to have authors in non-alphabetical order, and "corresponding author" means that that person has a steady mailing address (often some of the authors are postodcs). In mathematics it is customary to have authors in alphabetical order, it's true, so having a non-alphabetical order underscores that there is major inequality in contribution (needless to say, all authors must agree to this).
