Frequently Asked Questions

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The Open Data Catalog lists all data adhering to the Open Data terms of use. This catalog lists all Open Data and other publicly available data disseminated through World Bank sites, but may have some restrictions on use.

Each dataset is tagged with a terms of use which provides details on these restrictions.

The World Bank Group makes data available using a combination of licenses based on the Access to Information policy. As much as possible, we distribute data according to open data standards and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY 4.0). Many datasets are also available under other licenses. For more details, check the License page.

No. Depending on the agreement with the data providers, some datasets may have restricted access.

Data catalog provides a single point of access to all publicly available data through World Bank sites. Microdata Library lists all survey data and administrative records, Data Bank provides access to time series data.

Not all datasets listed in the catalog are owned by the WBG. Data ownership and terms of use are determined by agreements between the parties responsible for creating and maintaining the dataset. Data ownership is an important consideration in the catalog, and is reflected in each dataset's metadata. The World Bank does not endorse or verify the content of datasets owned by other organizations. Our choice to list external datasets in our catalog depends on our assessment regarding the relevance of the datasets to issues pertinent to international development.

If you have any questions or would like more details please email data@worldbank.org.
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