Inequitable power dynamics of global knowledge production and exchange must be confronted head on | Impact of Social Sciences

"[Research outputs] generally reside behind paywalls and can only be reached by people with access to expensive academic databases. This excludes those who cannot afford to pay for it, i.e., researchers in resource-constrained environments, and members of the general public who do not have passwords for the electronic facilities of universities and research institutions.  Of course this situation is about to change substantially as the open access policies that are currently percolating in the system in the EU, the UK and other countries are implemented over the next few years. This will substantially increase the volume of research to which scholars and readers all over the world have access, and will undoubtedly be a very important contribution to research.  Ironically, however, the danger of this more ubiquitous availability is that without similar national and regional policies in the developing world, and without resources being made available to actively support open dissemination in these countries, many types of research from the developing world will be rendered even more invisible. This may unwittingly consolidate the erroneous impression that these scholars are undertaking little of value, have little to contribute to global knowledge and are reliant on the intellectual capacity of the global north. In conclusion, to redraw the map of global knowledge production, the inequitable global power dynamics of global knowledge production and exchange must be confronted head on. Funding and infrastructure must be improved, our perceptions of “science” must be broadened to encompass the social sciences, research outputs need to be recognised as existing beyond the boundaries of the formal journal article, incentives and reward systems need to be adjusted to encourage the legitimation of the new fairer practices more possible by the affordances of a digitally networked world. And finally, the open access movement needs to broaden its focus from access to knowledge to full participation in knowledge creation and in scholarly communication."