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This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

"Showing "The World of Science", the map below portrays global research production as expressed through science journals' publishing in the early 2000s. It makes a dramatic point about the complexities of global inequalities in knowledge production and exchange. What would it take to redraw the knowledge production map to realise a vision of a more equitable and accurate world of knowledge?"

The research environment in the global South faces many pressing challenges given resource inequality. Technical and financial issues aside, Laura Czerniewicz asserts it is the values and practices shaped by the Northern research agenda which contribute just as much to the imbalance.

The paper is divided into two main sections. The first explores the central concepts of the ResIST project: the knowledge economy; inequalities; and science and technology policies. The second provides illustrations of the treatment of inequalities in S&T-related policies at three levels: national, European, and global.

In this 2009 bulletin, Leslie Chan discusses the growing inequalities in access to publications. A striking example he mentions is that of a doctor in Africa who makes a decision to alter a HIV programme based on an abstract. It's interesting to think about the strides we have taken to bridge inequalities in access in the past five years. It seems that though some gaps in access have been addressed, there are still obstacles to be overcome. Another point to be addressed is not only allowing access to information published by developed nations to reach those who cannot afford it, but also hearing the results of research and findings of institutions in the developing world.

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

this is an Public Colombian intitution, that is using the conected learnig as a tool but what see as a problem and a possible cause of inequality is thar in my contry only 10 million people have acces to the web. is this making the gap bigger.

Judging by the mainstream media, the most pressing problems facing capitalism are 1) income inequality, the subject of Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century , and 2) the failure of free markets to regulate their excesses, a common critique encapsulated by Paul Craig Roberts' recent book The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism .

This article is primarily about structural change in the global economy. But Smith notes, "[T]he middle class that has paid for its ever-expanding consumption with rising wages is in structural decline due to the displacement of human labor by software; and the state's ability to manage structural crises while protecting global cartel profits is being undermined...by the ever rising costs of providing healthcare and income security and paying the external costs of environmental damage." He goes on, "What could replace the current iteration of global state-capitalism? If we assemble these three potentially transformative dynamics-degrowth, the recoupling of risk and loss, and entrepreneurial mobile capital-we discern a new and potentially productive teleological arc to global capitalism, one that moves from a capitalism based on financial hyper-centralization and obsession with rising consumption to one focused on more efficient use of resources and capital via decentralization and localized innovation." We might ponder how open access/open knowledge can play a role these transformative dynamics.

Ukufunda, which means "learn" in isiZulu, is the name of the virtual school that was developed by Mxit Reach, UNICEF and the Department of Basic Education. It's an innovation in the South African education system that will address inequalities in the school system, raise education standards and put the power of education in the hands of every learner, teacher and parent.

In Spanish.

La realidad que se vive en México es muy distinta a países como EUA, Cánada,Alemania, etc., existe una gran desigualdad y no hay unión. Tal vez estas leyes no den resultados inmediatos, pero son importantes por que quienes las promovieron creyeron en ellas y las apoyaron, y en un país como México es de reconocerse que tuvieron iniciativa. Una ley no va cambiar la realidad de un país, eso depende de las personas y otros factores como la educación y los valores. ------------ The reality of life in Mexico is very different to countries like USA, Canada, Germany, etc., there is great inequality and no union. Perhaps these laws do not give immediate results, but are important because they promoted those who believed in them and supported them, and in a country like Mexico is recognized that took initiative. A law will not change the reality of a country that depends on people and other factors such as education and values.

Me encontré con esta interesante reseña acerca de las políticas de acceso abierto en México.

From immemorial time, the education has been a privilege for richest, this is a real problem and creates atremendous inequality between the human beings. It is truth that the knowledge, in this globalised era the MOOC for example, makes by all means, arrive specialized education at a number of people highly motivated and, the quality of the same of this is excellent,...

The video depicts importance of education for all. Education is eye opener to live like a human.Education seems to be a single solution for all the major issues facing the human race. Educating a girl means educating entire family which results in more literates in this world

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

"The results further showed that 64.8% of households in South Africa had no access to the Internet. Of those households that had access to the Internet, 16.3% accessed it via cellphone, 8.6% from home, 5.6% from elsewhere and 4.7% from work."

It's unfortunate that South Africa is still plagued by inequality. While it is good that some are accessing the web via mobile, ideally more efforts would be done to create infrastructure to serve entire communities.

one solution to help inequality problem?

Good crowd-funding project that tries to help solve the digital divide problem by providing infrastructure to those who lack the money to purchase a computer. In addition to providing the physical infrastructure of the computer to allow those without one to catch up to society, perhaps another solution to conquer the digital divide is to educate those who have just received computers how to use the internet to look for information, consume, produce and distribute the information.

Honestly I think public libraries need WAY more computers.

Francesca Villette THE government plans to introduce a schooling policy to help redress educational injustices and inequalities of the past by having pupils across the country using the same textbook and study material.