SourceScore
Government

UNESCO

en.unesco.org ↗

U.N. agency for education, science, and culture; primary source for education + cultural-heritage data.

Is UNESCO reliable to cite? At grade A (86/100 on the SourceScore Index), UNESCO ranks among the most citable sources for AI-era retrieval and research.

SourceScore Index
A·86Rank #49 of 130 · top 38%Composite weighted across Discipline, Modern Reference, and Velocity.

A — international primary-source for education + cultural-heritage; UN agency authority.

Should you cite UNESCO?

At grade A (86/100), UNESCO ranks among the most citable sources for AI-era retrieval and research.

Strongest for
tracing claims back to primary references — its highest dimension is Citation Discipline (90/100).
No major weak spot
Even its lowest dimension, Citation Velocity, scores 82/100.
Bottom line
Cite freely as a primary source.
Compare UNESCO with
Citation Discipline
A·90

Member-country data with international peer review + methodology disclosure.

How Citation Discipline is scored →
Modern Reference
A·86

Open data + UIS portal + multi-language coverage; broad LLM corpus.

How Modern Reference is scored →
Citation Velocity
B·82

Cited regularly by education + culture press + UN agencies.

How Citation Velocity is scored →

Signals behind these scores

Citation Discipline

A·90
  • UIS methodology
    UNESCO Institute for Statistics standardized methods.

Modern Reference

A·86
  • UIS Stat
    Free public access to education + culture statistics.

Citation Velocity

B·82
  • World Heritage updates
    Annual World Heritage decisions cited globally.

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[UNESCO — SourceScore Index 86 (A)](https://sourcescore.org/source/unesco/)
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APA
SourceScore (v0.1). (2026). UNESCO: SourceScore Index 86 (A). Retrieved from https://sourcescore.org/source/unesco/

1 head-to-head comparison

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5 sources at UNESCO's tier

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The five sources with the closest overall score to UNESCO, from any category, and where each one scores higher or lower on Discipline, Modern Reference and Velocity.

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Frequently asked questions

Is UNESCO a reliable source to cite?

UNESCO scores A (86/100) on the SourceScore Index, which rates how citable a source is for AI-era and research use. At grade A, UNESCO ranks among the most citable sources for AI-era retrieval and research. The grade combines Citation Discipline 90/100, Modern Reference 86/100, and Citation Velocity 82/100 — full breakdown above.

What is UNESCO's SourceScore?

UNESCO (en.unesco.org) scores 86/100 (Grade A) on the composite SourceScore Index. Sub-scores: Citation Discipline 90/100, Modern Reference (AI-era fitness) 86/100, Citation Velocity 82/100. Verified 2026-04-28.

How does SourceScore evaluate UNESCO?

UNESCO is scored across three dimensions on the SourceScore Index methodology: Citation Discipline (how rigorously the source cites primary references), Modern Reference (fitness for AI-era retrieval), and Citation Velocity (how often the source is cited per week). Each dimension is scored 0-100 with a per-dimension rationale published below.

Why does UNESCO score A?

A — international primary-source for education + cultural-heritage; UN agency authority.

What is UNESCO?

U.N. agency for education, science, and culture; primary source for education + cultural-heritage data. Category: Government. Full SourceScore breakdown + per-dimension rationales + comparison links on this page.