With the Overton app, customers can find policy documents and track the impact of research. But lots of other exciting use cases exist. We’ve partnered with external organisations on several projects so that users can access policy data in tools that they already use.
Typically we specialise in data and analytics, and our collaborators contribute industry insights, connections, and detailed knowledge of their specific use cases.
We partnered with Elsevier to make policy data available in their PlumX and SciVal products. Bringing data from all three products together means that research administrators can see traditional citations, policy and altmetrics for their institution all in one place.
Elsevier’s research metrics products are used and trusted by academic institutions worldwide.
Our data powers the policy impact module for SciVal and the policy citations tab in PlumX.
SciVal uses Scopus’ author and institution profiles which make it easy for users to quickly see policy citations for individual researchers and organisations.
By pulling together traditional citations, policy documents and altmetrics, Elsevier is able to offer users a holistic view of where their work is being used and discussed.
The Overton app is better suited to policy specific analyses, as it allows full text search and tracking second order citations – where research sometimes reaches policy via a knowledge broker like a think tank or NGO.
We partnered with BMJ Group to create an impact measurement tool focused solely on health and social care. It’s specifically created for the medical community so provides more breadth and depth of content in that field.
The BMJ Group approached us to build a simple tool to track real-world impact in healthcare, following conversations with their stakeholders in the health and medical research community.
Our co-development combines BMJ’s health expertise with Overton’s data knowledge to develop a new app uniquely tailored to the needs of the health and medical research community. BMJ Impact Analytics was extensively tested with medical departments at universities and funders.
BMJ Impact Analytics is focused specifically on health and social care, while the original Overton app pulls in policy documents from all topic areas.
The team at BMJ have brought their expertise to the task of finding and assessing new health and clinical sources. Many unique sources have been added, such as BMJ Best Practice – BMJ’s clinical decision support tool that doctors use – and care pathways to help users find evidence of impact closer to the patient.
The user interface has been simplified and is centred around starting with a list of scholarly articles rather than policy documents.
We partnered with the Government Office for Science, the Economic and Social Research Council and Transforming Evidence to create a searchable database of ‘Areas of Research Interest’ (ARIs) from UK governmental bodies. Using this platform, researchers can see government priorities and identify opportunities for collaboration.
Government departments publish lists of policy issues or questions – known as ‘ARIs’ – as a way to share their knowledge and evidence needs with researchers. However, these ARIs were stored in different places across the gov.uk webpages, and weren’t easily searchable.
We created this ARI database to bring all these questions (and any existing answers) into one place and make it easier for government users to collaborate with each other on shared goals and access external experts. It also enables researchers to find out about the government’s evidence gaps, giving them the opportunity to tailor their work to solve these problems.
Unlike our other products, this database is not intended to help users track or measure policy impact but rather to create it. Our hope is to strengthen science-policy collaboration and improve decision makers access to evidence, by making it easier for experts to find out what questions government needs answered.
We partnered with Sage to create a free tool for individual researchers and academics to discover their policy impact. Users can track both their policy citations and mentions, and visualise the data in a personalised dashboard. Exporting and sharing functionality enables individuals to showcase their impact in promotion and tenure applications, and funding proposals.
We worked with Sage to create a simple tool that is freely accessible through their platform, to enable researchers to track their impact on policy. It uses Overton’s data and the app was developed in-house by our team.
Sage is the world’s leading social science publisher, and is both independently owned and mission driven. One of their organisational goals is to help “social and behavioural science make a positive impact on the world”. They are particularly interested in re-framing and evolving how research impact is understood and measured, moving beyond the current set of metrics. This of course aligns with Overton’s ethos, so we were excited to collaborate! Our data expertise allows them to provide value to their community, and the power of Sage’s brand helps Overton share our mission with an even wider audience. It was important to both Sage and Overton that the tool be free, in order to encourage broad use and advance conversations about research impact.
Unlike the Overton app, Sage Policy Profiles is designed for individuals rather than organisations. It focuses on discovering a user’s research to policy citations, along with tracking and evidencing their personal impact. Any individual can create an account to view their policy impact.
Sage Policy Profiles doesn’t provide advanced policy discovery tools, and shows only a limited amount of policy to policy citations. This means that the tool is not suitable for studying policy influence or trends in a more general way, or for finding and analysing grey literature for research purposes.
A new interface has been created specifically for Sage Policy Profiles, to reflect the streamlined view of data, and create an engaging and easily understandable picture of your research impact.
We collaborate with lots of different organisations, and are always happy to hear about new opportunities. If you’d like to speak to us about collaborating on a project, contact support@overton.io
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