[1] It was launched in 2012,[1] alongside the World Bank's Open Access Policy and its adoption of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license for all research and knowledge products that it publishes, which collectively made the World Bank the first international organization to completely embrace open access.
[2][3][4] The repository collects the intellectual output of the World Bank in digital form, disseminates it, and preserves it long-term.
[3] The repository was designed to serve a wide variety of users, including governments, civil society organizations, students, and the general public.
[11] Through its use of Altmetrics, the Open Knowledge Repository has determined that, as of April 2015, its content had been used over 42,000 times in policy documents, by the press, in blogs and on social media, and on Wikipedia.
[1][2][9] In the words of Diane Peters, the repository's adherence to DCMI and OAI-PMH demonstrate it was "built with an eye toward maximizing interoperability, discoverability, and reusability".
[3] In January 2014, the repository's website was relaunched with a new responsive web design, enabling better access on mobile devices.