Editorial Desk · September 3, 2026
How we date a Factbook figure
Edition year, then field year, then the number. In that order.
Countries in this report
Every figure on a country page is dated twice: once in the field text (“2025 est.”, “2024 est.”, “2021 dollars”) and once by the edition you are looking at. The primary edition on this site is 2025. The oldest edition on the shelf is 1981. There are 45 years between those two covers, imported from Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, Wayback snapshots, and factbook.json commits.
How to write the date
- Name the field: Population, total.
- Name the edition: World Factbook 2025.
- Copy the in-field date if there is one: 35,336,133 (2025 est.).
That three-part cite survives a World Bank refresh next Tuesday. The Notebook has the longer argument; this note is the house style.