On material transfer agreements and visibility of researchers in biotechnology

When carrying out a research project, some materials may not be available in-house. Thus, investigators resort to external providers for conducting their research. To that end, the exchange may be formalised through material transfer agreements. In this context, industry, government and academia have their own specific expectations regarding compensation for the help they provide when transferring the research material. This paper assesses whether these contracts might have had an impact on visibility of researchers. Visibility is thereby operationalised on the basis of a bibliometric approach. In the sample utilised, researchers that availed themselves of these contracts were more visible compared to those who did not use them, controlling for seniority and co-authorship. Nonetheless, providers and receivers could not be differentiated in terms of visibility but by research sector and co-authorship. Being a user of these contracts might, to some extent, be the reflection of systematic differences in the stratification of science based on visibility. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.