Active involvement in exchanges of research
tools with either other academic researchers
and/or industrial scientists is the norm;
66 report 1,224 cases of provision of research
tools to others, and 69 report a total of 770
cases of receiving tools, over five years. The
types of research tools that are most frequently
exchanged between researchers are quite distinct
from those that researchers choose to
patent. Vectors, plasmids and gene clones are
the most commonly exchanged unpatented
tools, followed by seeds, germplasm and plan