My background is in environmental studies, and one of the terms frequently used (usually with regards to companies/products) is “watermelon”- green on the outside/superficially beneficial, but red on the inside. I’m naturally skeptical, and I’m wondering if there is a general list kept of known vendors/resources that are marketed as “open” or “low-cost” but actually reveal themselves to be more predatory?
That’s an interested and new to me metaphor!
I find it referred to as watermelon status or watermelon reporting
You might find more about this under the concept of openwashing – see https://openwashing.org/ which comes from the practice in environmental science you might know of as greenwashing One of the early posts on this was in 2009 by Michelle Thorne
No list found, but it looks like there was an attempt to collect tweets for offenders under a hashtag of OpenwashingNominee (but that’s empty) - there are more tweets under the general #openwashing hashtag
I am loving though the watermelon metaphor, that works so well.
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I didn’t know the watermelon metaphor. Like cogdog, I am mostly aware of and use the term ‘open washing’.
I also believe this is an important question that requires a broader and deeper discussion within our community!
In order to state that a vendor is superficially marketing their resources as “open”, I think it will help if as community, we have very clear and widely supported practical guidelines on what needs to be present to conform to the UNESCO definition of ‘open’.
So according to UNESCO, the resources need to be accessible at no-cost and have a CC license. Are there other practical characteristics that need to be present as well?
How do you determine if the resource permits adaptation or redistribution?
I’ve written down my thoughts on open washing and which practical characteristics I think need to be present: Blogpost: Is This Open? | Grasple
Open Washing is definitely a more applicable term. I may not know enough about the topic to write what I am going to, and so if this post is removed I completely understand. But to me, it seems like the prominent textbook publishing companies are really piling into this, and using universities/colleges as a cover for it. So many places are increasing tuition, then saying that textbooks are “free”, but (and again, I’m not in the room where these conversations/decisions happen, so it is possible I am not interpreting things correctly) the cost of tuition increases, and the institutions going along with this seem to be either unwittingly blind, convinced of the value of the “embedded assignment” aspect, or possibly (and this is the most negative spin) deliberately ignoring the actual cost which is funneled onto the students via increased tuition. I have heard instructors from multiple institutions over the years complaining about these “embedded” textbooks from their end, and even more so from students, who are frustrated that they lose access to the textbooks at the end of a course- either because they simply want access to the knowledge or perhaps need the book to retake the course. I understand that higher education has a lot of “political landmines” …spending in general seems to be highly questionable (when I attended Eastern Michigan University there was a scandal about inappropriate spending by the President that I believe eventually lost him his position). When I lived in Columbia, SC, I had the interesting experience of watching the disaster of Bob Caslan play out in real-time from beginning to rather abrupt and predictably quick end. My main takeaway from that though, beyond the “blooper reel” so to speak, was a great deal of internal frustration in the institution about a lack of transparency with spending. This is a bit of a round-about way to conclude that I just wonder if decisions to embed the cost of textbooks into tuition is truly based in the belief that doing so is in the students best interest, or if there are other factors (such as how much tuition could be increased by) that might play a role? I do think that it would be lovely if there was an in-depth study of major universities comparing tuition increases that have been claimed to be due to embedded textbooks. It seems like the department of education could do more to try and protect students/guide institutions towards making decisions that are more fiscally beneficial to students (which to me seems to be directly linked to a stronger stick/carrot incentive approach at the higher levels of academic administrations). Again, this might be rambling and off-base, but it’s something that has been itching my brain for a while.