Resumen:
Even if there exist great differences among countries of Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean, those countries share problems which need input from local and regional social science research in support of policy making, community actions, comparative research and university studies and teaching. The traditional system for dissemination of research results in printed publications has limited impact because of low average of copies printed for academic publications, prohibitive costs of regular mail to distribute printed publications, and lack of library budget to update social science collections.
