Pares y redes de laboratorios del Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique y de sus asociados.

The paper addresses irreversible cooperation in research partnerships. It analyzes longitudinal data from various contracts signed by research units of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and companies or public organizations. The contracts signed between 1986 and 2005 are short term ones, which conveys an impression of volatility. But collaboration does not take the same form for laboratories and companies. In the case of laboratory matching, loyalty is an issue as far as contract renewal is concerned. Finally, Social Network Analysis helps understanding similarities between the contracts signed by several big companies with research units, and confirms that “small scientific worlds” do exist.