Material transfer agreements and collaborative publication activity: the case of a biotechnology network

Although material transfer agreements may be useful to exchange research materials between laboratories, academics and policymakers have suggested that the trend towards their standardisation might impede the progress of science by constraining one type of research collaboration: the co-publication activity of organisations. For that reason, we examine whether involvement in those agreements affects the pattern of co-publication activity. The construct co-publication activity is thereby operationalised on the basis of a bibliometric approach. The organisations and their collaboration are described with the help of graph theory. According to our interpretation of findings, material transfer agreements might not have interfered in such a way to limit co-publication activity of research organisations in the network.