The rise of the bio-based economy is expected to deliver significant benefits to society in terms of health, agriculture and environment in particular. These advances in the life sciences are increasingly relying on open cooperation and collaboration nationally, regionally and internationally. It is one of the driving forces behind the push for broader access and open systems approach for the flow of information, materials and ideas. At the same time, in the area of genetic resources — one of the major material inputs for bio-based innovations— new regulatory requirements are profoundly impacting the way life science is conducted, in particular the balance between openness and proprietary rules in research. These new global regulatory requirements are affecting the capacity of scientist to acquire new material for their research.The rise of the bio-based economy and the increase in institutional constraints over biological materials are occurring at the same time. Within this context, science policy research can no longer possible to assume that collaborators have control over the inputs to research. This project aims to analyze how global policy changes that regulate access to material inputs to research impact the evolution of norms that guide scientific research in the new bio-based economy in the agricultural sector. Specific attention is paid to changes in international scientific collaboration and impact on research outputs and outcomes. The project has identified two primary objectives. The first one aims to assess the impact of global policy changes that affect access to material inputs to research on norms, values and practices of international scientific collaboration in bio-based research for agriculture. The second one aims to better understanding the advantages and limits of various collective arrangements for biodiversity-based research in agriculture.