Exclusive Sharing of Genetic Materials in U.S. Agricultural Research: Antecedents and Consequences

As recognition of the scientific and industrial values of genetic materials has increased, so have restrictions on access to those materials for research. Nonetheless, our understanding of access to genetic materials in science is still limited. As a way of assessing access to genetic materials in agricultural research, this study sought to uncover the critical moments when genetic materials begin to be withheld by selective entities. Exclusive sharing was defined as the condition in which genetic materials were shared only by selective entities but not transferred to a third-party. The decision on whether to have a third-party sharing restriction was modeled with socio-ecological antecedents and used to predict the likelihood of producing research outcomes (i.e., publications and intellectual property outcomes). Results show that exclusive sharing is associated with broader socio-ecological contexts which cannot be reduced to pure science production systems. Scientists’ exclusive sharing was found to be influenced by national borders and the ecological conditions of the genetic materials shared. Furthermore, exclusive sharing comes down to individual and interpersonal decision, so that bilateral interactions among material providers and receivers were found to play an important role in setting a third-party sharing restriction. Predicted sharing restrictions, in turn, influenced intellectual property outcomes and publications to a different degree. Results suggest that setting a third-party sharing restriction can be beneficial for intellectual property outcomes but does not provide much benefit for publishing articles. This can indicate that there exist two divergent production systems connecting material-sharing with research outcomes.