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The expansion of the Institut Pasteur international network from 2003 to the present day, has coincided with the strengthening of a common legal framework, associated to a Declaration of shared scientific and ethical values qualified as "Pasteurian". The article explores the originality of the network, emphasises the importance of its reference to a shared history, and hypothesizes the ongoing fabrication of an esprit de corps uniting scientists coming from a variety of communities. The RIIP may thus be the tool of a scientific diplomacy working to lessen the inequalities in the domain of scientific and medical knowledge, in an unstable world., (© 2014 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

Nucleic acids offer an ample structural and functional plasticity enabling their industrial production and chemical diversification for therapeutic purposes as well as the establishment in vivo and in vitro of informational processes that did not spontaneously occur during evolution.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the economic dynamics of modern biotechnology in the USA was coming from scientific and industrial centres. These bio parks combined the development of academic knowledge with innovating industrial and biomedical activities using public and private fundings. In France, the goal of competitiveness within a knowledge-based economy focusing on life sciences, led the government to change its institutional schemes supporting innovation. The creation of Genopole in Evry in 1998 institutionalizes a bifurcation in Science and Technology public policy to diffusion-oriented instruments. This centre of excellence connected together heterogeneous partners and resources around large scale facilities and the implementation of a technological and logistic support to stimulate start up companies. Although the dynamics created by Genopole for both the knowledge base and commercialisation in genomics is a unique outcome of a public/private combination and national/local process, this experimental intermediary institution generated new bridges between science and society.

The recent US law (H.R.2764) affecting NIH policy and the recent unanimous vote by the Arts and Science faculty of Harvard University in favour of a mandatory deposit of researchers' publications in a suitable repository have brought the Open Access movement into public light. After reviewing the historical background of Open Access, its evolution and extension in the United States, Great Britain, France and Canada are examined. Policies aiming at strengthening Open Access to scientific research are viewed as the direct consequence of treating scientific publishing as an integral part of the research cycle. It should, therefore, be wrapped into the financing of research. As the greater part of research is funded by public money, it appears legitimate to make its results as widely available as is possible. Open Access journals and repositories with strong deposit mandates form the backbone of the strategies to achieve the objective of Open Access. Despite the claims of some publishers, Open Access does not weaken or threaten the peer review process, and it does not conflict with copyright laws.

The European Union has set itself the daunting target of becoming the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010. Any hope of success against the United States and the Asian tiger economies lies in the quality of scientific and technological research. In France, postgraduate training has long labored under a deep academia/industry divide. Although the universities have introduced supervised 3 year doctoral courses along the lines of the English-speaking countries, they still produce too many postdocs with little experience or understanding of, and little taste for, the private sector. This ignores career realities: the public sector can offer employment to only half the postdocs it produces. The rest must fall back on positions in the private sector, in some cases with a sense of failure, ill suiting them to drive the intellectual economy forwards compared to their international competitors. To combat the divide and emphasize the quality of the research training available within industry, the public/private National Association for Technical Research (ANRT), acting on behalf of the Ministry of Research, created the Industrial Research Training Agreement (Cifre) scheme in 1981. Higher education laboratories and private companies combine to offer doctoral students the opportunity to undertake their 3 year course in a mixed public/private environment (the exact ratio is not defined but in the case of the Servier Research Group, an early and active participant in the scheme, at least one third of the course is spent in the private sector). The doctoral thesis is thereby transformed into a meaningful career qualification. Funded by the Ministry, with maintenance grants to the students and compensatory payments to the companies, the Cifre scheme, which is currently being expanded, has produced 12,000 postdocs personally and intellectually equipped for careers transiting seamlessly between the public and private sectors, to the enrichment of each.