There is an unwritten rule in biology that if you publish a paper that refers to uses of certain reagents that are not commercially available, then you are obligated to provide those reagents to other investigators who read the paper and request them. There can also be an expected obligation that the other researchers will share any data they generate using the reagents with the original authors.
Outside of biology, I have seen many "academic" papers published on computer-related topics that refer to software programs developed by the papers' authors that are crucial to the research but not publicly available. Is there any similar unwritten rule to that in biology where another researcher reading these papers can request a copy of these programs from the authors?
Obviously, in many cases other researchers cannot replicate and verify findings without access to the same research tools used in the published papers.
I've frequently asked for researchers code. most are excited someone is interested in their work, if a little nervous, or embarrassed by their coding umm style (neuroscience)
Outside of biology, I have seen many "academic" papers published on computer-related topics that refer to software programs developed by the papers' authors that are crucial to the research but not publicly available. Is there any similar unwritten rule to that in biology where another researcher reading these papers can request a copy of these programs from the authors?
Obviously, in many cases other researchers cannot replicate and verify findings without access to the same research tools used in the published papers.