English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

Blend of open +‎ greenwash

Verb edit

openwash (third-person singular simple present openwashes, present participle openwashing, simple past and past participle openwashed)

  1. To market something as open (without proprietary licensing) when it does not meet all the criteria of openness.
    • 2015, Kristian Møller, Moltke Martiny, “Embodying Investigations of Cerebral Palsy: A Case of Open Cognitive Science”, in Kristian Moltke Martiny, Allan Alfred Birkegaard Hansted, editors, Open Mind means Open Media, page 230:
      Over all, one cannot reduce the skills needed for collaboration to skills in joint publishing. On the other hand, the collaborative skills needed should still be knowledge skills, so the aim is to not 'openwash' the knowledge processes.
    • 2018, KU Leuven, Sketching a Place for Education in Times of Learning:
      Perhaps we should change tack: instead of talking about opening up education, which is in effect leading to many attempts to outsource education to (quasi-)commercial organizations who “openwash” their activities, shouldn't we aim to develop an educational rendering of openness
    • 2020, Kevin Sanders, Simon Bowie, “Open or Ajar? Openness within the Neoliberal Academy”, in Preprints:
      In the sector of information and knowledge production, some publishers openwash by making proprietary content accessible ahead of publication or by arbitrarily distributing digital copies of published Versions of Record to authors that are for personal use.

Anagrams edit