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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.

HINARI Access to Research in Health Programme provides free or very low cost online access to the major journals in biomedical and related social sciences to local, not-for-profit institutions in developing countries.

This year, the fifth annual Publishers for Development (PfD) conference explored current developments in scholarly communication including their impact on publishers, researchers and information professionals in the global South. The rapid growth in open access, the potential for social media to increase communication of research and also new measures for the way research is used were all topics viewed from a Southern perspective. The one-day conference was held in London on 15 October and titled 'Forward Thinking: Developing a global research cycle which fully engages South and North'. It brought together publishers from 16 publishing houses, librarians and researchers from universities in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Also present were representatives of organisations involved in research access, production and use such as the World Bank, African Journals Online, Research4Life, Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA), Talloires Network and Partnerships in Health Information.

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

"Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), microblogging services (e.g. Twitter), and content sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr) have introduced the opportunity for wide scale, online social participation. Visibility of national and international priorities such as public health, political unrest, disaster relief, and climate change has increased, yet we know little about the benefits and possible costs of engaging in social activism via social media. "

This article reminds me to the activism of a Spanish councellor to promote activism through social net against the independence of Cataluña in Spain: http://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2014/10/12/54390135ca474179608b4571.html