The World Bank is the largest single source of development knowledge. The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products.

The Open Access Policy and the OKR represent the third major development in the World Bank’s Open Development Agenda, joining these earlier initiatives:

• Open Data Initiative (launched in April 2010): a range of reforms enabling free access to thousands of development indicators, as well as a wealth of information on World Bank project and finance, and
• Access to Information Policy (launched in July 2010): a groundbreaking change in how the World Bank makes information available to the public.

By extending and improving access to World Bank research, the World Bank aims to encourage innovation and allow anyone in the world to use Bank knowledge to help improve the lives of those living in poverty. The OKR is constantly updated with new content, as well as legacy reports and research.

The OKR is built on DSpace, the open source platform heavily used in the open access community, powering over 2,000 open repositories, and is interoperable with other repositories. It supports optimal discoverability and re- usability of the content by complying with Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) standards. All OKR metadata is exposed through the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

Since its launch in 2012, millions of publications have been downloaded from the OKR, and nearly half of its users are in developing countries. The OKR was named one of ALA RUSA’s “Best Free Reference Web Sites of 2013” The World Bank also received the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition (SPARC) “Open Access Innovator” award in 2012 for the OKR.

• Listing ID: 71909
• Access Url: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/
• Related Subject: Missellaneous, Library, Resources

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