In a time of the promotion of data that is open access, the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository admirably fulfils the mission of the open access agenda, “unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse” (Public Library of Science, 2015). In an 10 April 2012 press release, the World Bank announced its “open access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products […] to increase access to information […] and to makes its research as widely available as possible”. The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository has been launched and is available for anyone to “use, re-use and redistribute most of the Bank’s knowledge products and research outputs for commercial or non-commercial purposes” http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23164491∼pagePK:64257043∼piPK:437376∼theSitePK:4607,00.html).
The Open Knowledge Repository is accessible via the publications link from the World Bank website, www.worldbank.org/ and includes open access content since 2000. The repository is a remarkable endeavour in its outreach, breadth of data and ease of use. The site is streamlined and serves well the World Bank’s 188 member countries in its mission to “end extreme poverty within a generation and boost shared prosperity”. There is a link to the repository website, or search options from the publications page. These include a keyword search, also searching by topic, region, collection or country, all leading to results pages on the repository website. A keyword search for “climate change”, results in 2,600 full-text titles in PDF or text, each with an image of their top page. Results can be narrowed by author, date, global practice, topic, publication type, keyword, region and country. In addition, the entire repository can be searched, or the search can be limited to publication type – books, journals, serials, technical papers, working papers, etc.
To search directly from the Repository, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/, the keyword search box is at the top right of the page. Featured and latest publications are listed in the middle of the page, and the left bar lists other options for navigation. The repository can be browsed by collections or publication type, authors (listed alphabetically), dates (selecting a year results in publications released during that year), global practices (agriculture, education, energy, environment and natural resources, poverty, etc.), Topics, and titles (by first word in the title). Following collections is author profiles, which offers a brief biography, author rank, abstract views and file downloads (also by top country), and a list of that author’s titles. Site statistics lists file downloads, abstract views, sum, publications and author rank for authors, global practices, countries and titles. Other includes information about the site – News, About, Terms of Use, FAQ and Harvesting the Repository – importing metadata for the all of the contents or a specific publication.
The Resources section highlights the World Bank’s open access policy. It provides links to the Open Data, Open Development and Documents Reports pages of the site. World Bank Open Data offers “free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe”. Data can be browsed by country, topic or by indicators. Data, which can be viewed in a databank (which can be viewed in a table, chart or map format) or can be downloaded, consists primarily of World Development Indicators (school enrollment, CO2 emissions, poverty headcount, improved water source, life expectancy, GNI per capita), global economic prospects (annual gross domestic product growth and current annual balance), projects and operations (outlined on a map – agriculture/fishing/forestry, information/communications, energy/mining, water/sanitation/flood protection, finance, public administration, health, industry/trade, education, transportation), finances (loans and credits), surveys (providing micro data),climate change (average monthly temperature and rainfall). These sets are also offered via the World Bank home page via the Data tab.
The open development page highlights the resources the World Bank has made available to “foster innovation and increase transparency in development, aid flows, and finances”. This includes open data, also data resources including the publications World Bank e-Atlases, World Development Indicators, and World Governance Indicators. It also includes the data catalog and the databank, additional tool sets for data mining, with indicators that include those in World Bank Open Data as described above.
Documents and reports allows for the searching of close to 200,000 operational documents and working papers of the Bank in PDF or OCR text format. These can be browsed by country, topic, document type and language. There is also an advanced search which allows for intricate searching by the standard keywords, author, title, date, but also region, country, topic, language, document type, lending instrument product line and environmental category. These can all be combined resulting in a very specific result list.
With the content, organization and accessibility of the materials, the World Bank serves as a model site for data distribution and should be commended for its efforts to make so available its research and data sets for the benefit of all.
The World Bank also offers by subscription the World Bank eLibrary (http://elibrary.worldbank.org/) (RR 2005/134), which includes “all backlist content since the 1990s with no content embargoes” (World Bank, 2015a). This product with additional features such as content alerts, etc. is geared towards researchers and libraries. A comparison chart is available for these products as well (World Bank, 2015b). Recent publications searched by title in the repository and eLibrary were available full-text in both.
