One of the great concerns of current societies, to avoid the ‘post-modern’ term, is the management and generation of new knowledge. The matter is so transcendental that many political scientists consider that public policy on science is a sine qua non condition for consolidating democracy.

Nonetheless, there can not be knowledge or science if there is not a scientific cul ture in place. The social appropriation of science and public communication of science are key factors for the survival of the human being, e.g. for solving multidimensional problems such as super-population, lack of food, greenhouse effect, contamination, the thermonuclear threat and the pandemics.

Science, as a social institution (^{Ziman, 2003}) has great repercussions in the cultural, political and social life of the human being. Thus, knowledge, as a determinant product of science, transforms reality in all of its conceptual, logical, semantic, political, and discursive configurations.

However, given that we consider science as a social institution, the generation of knowledge and thus the generation of scientific culture, are not part of the citizen’s concerns. Science is only perceived in its instrumental function, and so science is mistaken for technology. This aporia goes in detriment of democracy because it allows the growth of a techno-bureaucracy with merely economic concerns and for its own benefit.

The underlying question in this pseudoscientific thread is how to generate a scien tific culture that becomes a tool for democratic participation and the empowering of the citizen for the solution of the fundamental problems afflicting him or her socially.

Generating scientific culture is a systemic and complex action that requires many components, especially in the divulgation processes and public communication of science. Scientific culture is understood as a comprehension of the social dynamic of science. Thus, they are threaded in an interrelation among scientific knowledge producers and other social groups, all of them as participants in the becoming of culture. That way, it produces meaning which origin and justifications come from different practices, interests, codes and power relationships that are understood as a continuous becoming (^{Vaccarezza, 2008}).

This definition of scientific culture aligns with the current precepts of critical theory. This last one establishes that within the idea of a rational universal is contained the concept of a common good, on which there has to be a rational agreement between the members of a society to link individual liberties cooperatively (^{Honneth, 2009}).

From our realm as social scientists, the interest of journals like Anagramas is to divulge the results of researches in the areas of communications and social and human sciences. Thus, there is a contribution to the process of building a scientific culture as a common good for citizens.

In this issue, Anagramas presents to the community contributions of researchers and scientists of many countries that through their research provide to the construction of scientific culture and public communication of science.