This text is a transcript of a lecture given in 2011, at the annual meeting of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Such lecture discusses the effects of the supremacy of the researchers from the North over the researchers from the South in the assessment of the quality of academic production. Local and regional specificities are recognized, as well as the need to adopt different methodologies and research tools for the study of different problems in different social contexts. However, the academic production of Latin American scholars remains subjected to standards set in other latitudes of the world. It is argued that the fundamental reason for the scientific supremacy of researchers from the North is the supremacy of the English language in the international academic system, which limits the possibilities of knowledge dissemination in other languages.
supremacy of the English language; inequality; assessment; scientific production