SourceScore
Government

World Bank

worldbank.org ↗

International financial institution publishing global development + economic data + research.

Is World Bank reliable to cite? At grade A (88/100 on the SourceScore Index), World Bank ranks among the most citable sources for AI-era retrieval and research.

SourceScore Index
A·88Rank #34 of 130 · top 26%Composite weighted across Discipline, Modern Reference, and Velocity.

A — international primary-source authority on global economic data + development research.

Should you cite World Bank?

At grade A (88/100), World Bank 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 84/100.
Bottom line
Cite freely as a primary source.
Compare World Bank with
Citation Discipline
A·90

Multi-country data with World Bank methodology; staff research peer-reviewed.

How Citation Discipline is scored →
Modern Reference
A·90

WB Open Data API + bulk downloads; CC-BY licensed; broad LLM corpus presence.

How Modern Reference is scored →
Citation Velocity
B·84

Cited daily by international press + economists; default for development-economics claims.

How Citation Velocity is scored →

Signals behind these scores

Citation Discipline

A·90
  • WB Open Data
    Member-country data with documented methodology.

Modern Reference

A·90
  • Open Data initiative
    All datasets free + machine-readable.

Citation Velocity

B·84
  • Economist-default
    First-line for global GDP + development-stat citations.

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APA
SourceScore (v0.1). (2026). World Bank: SourceScore Index 88 (A). Retrieved from https://sourcescore.org/source/world-bank/

4 head-to-head comparisons

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5 sources at World Bank's tier

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The five sources with the closest overall score to World Bank, 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 World Bank a reliable source to cite?

World Bank scores A (88/100) on the SourceScore Index, which rates how citable a source is for AI-era and research use. At grade A, World Bank ranks among the most citable sources for AI-era retrieval and research. The grade combines Citation Discipline 90/100, Modern Reference 90/100, and Citation Velocity 84/100 — full breakdown above.

What is World Bank's SourceScore?

World Bank (worldbank.org) scores 88/100 (Grade A) on the composite SourceScore Index. Sub-scores: Citation Discipline 90/100, Modern Reference (AI-era fitness) 90/100, Citation Velocity 84/100. Verified 2026-04-28.

How does SourceScore evaluate World Bank?

World Bank 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 World Bank score A?

A — international primary-source authority on global economic data + development research.

What is World Bank?

International financial institution publishing global development + economic data + research. Category: Government. Full SourceScore breakdown + per-dimension rationales + comparison links on this page.