Upcoming Changes to the World Bank eLibrary
The World Bank has announced that they are discontinuing the World Bank eLibrary subscription platform at the end of June 2024. The University of California’s current subscription term is prorated to extend through this period. CDL currently subscribes to the World Bank eLibrary (https://elibrary.worldbank.org/) on behalf of six campuses (Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego). World Bank Group Publications cites their commitment to open access publishing and dedication toward improving open access tools & services as their basis for the discontinuation of the subscription service.
The World Bank makes all its publications available on their open access platforms and will continue to do so going forward. The content will be available in PDF format only for now. The World Bank eLibrary offered enhanced functionality (such as epub & html formats) and research tools. The World Bank Group will announce when any future changes in functionality and format to these free platforms are further developed. World Bank eLibrary URLs will redirect to titles at either the Open Knowledge Repository or the Documents and Reports platform after June 30, 2024. CDL will work to clean up resources in the catalog. Any personal user accounts on the World Bank eLibrary will be deleted after June 30, 2024, and personal user accounts are not currently offered on the free sites (users with accounts would have been notified by World Bank directly).
Alternative World Bank platforms with freely available resources include:
World Bank Documents and Reports: https://documents.worldbank.org
The Documents and Report site includes institutional information from 1946-present, including board documents, country focus, economic and sector work, project documents, and publications and research. This includes content that was in eLibrary (such as books, reports, working papers, and “Other research” since the 1990s.)
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR): https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/
The OKR is the official open access repository for World Bank research and knowledge, and is constantly updated with new content, as well as legacy reports and research. The OKR includes books and reports from 2000-present, including: World Development Reports (WDRs) and papers, serials, Policy Research Working Papers (PRWP), Economic and Sector Work (ESW) studies, and more.
Journal articles are included in the OKR as well. All final manuscript copies of journal articles are available in the OKR after the publisher’s embargo. Author accepted submissions (pre-prints) are available immediately without embargo.
World Bank Open Data Portal: https://data.worldbank.org/
- The Data Catalog contains a comprehensive listing of all data and datasets published by the World Bank.
- The DataBank contains extensive collections of time series data, including querying and visualization tools
- The Microdata Library contains microdata collected through sample surveys of households, businesses, and other facilities.
- World Development Indicators
World Bank Journals at Oxford:
Final published versions of articles published in these two journals can be found through CDL’s Oxford journals subscription without embargo:
The World Bank economic review. https://academic.oup.com/wber
The World Bank research observer. https://academic.oup.com/wbro
CDL is working to clean up World Bank eLibrary links in the catalog after the eLibrary platform ceases and make available a selection of free resources from the World Bank. Ex Libris is also aware of the changes to the platform and working in coordination with the World Bank.
For questions about these resources, please contact the Resource Liaison for the World Bank, Joseph Yue (josephyue@library.ucla.edu)