Scholarly expertise plays a crucial role in government decision-making. Many researchers want to affect real world change and do good with their work. But it’s not always clear how to connect with policymakers. Researchers often don’t know where to look, or who to ask for help.
When exploring a new topic, policymakers will often seek advice to supplement their understanding. Overton Engage collects government calls for evidence and expertise into one, convenient database, to show how you could make a difference. We make it easy for researchers to support evidence-based decision-making.
Researchers must be highly responsive if they want to influence public policy and support the creation of effective legislation. Calls for evidence and other requests for expertise often have incredibly short lead times. Policy teams – or researchers themselves – have to keep on top of all these opportunities, and move quickly to ensure they don’t miss out.
Now you can use one tool to discover over 3000 policy engagement opportunities, find suitable scholars in your institution and contact the requestor directly. No more manual searching through different web pages and faculty lists, only to discover that you’ve missed the deadline.
Discover opportunities to engage with policymakers. We manually collect and curate the list to extract key information, including deadlines and the contact information of the requestor.
We gather information from IGOs, civil society organisations and government at a local, national and international level. Opportunities include calls for evidence, government policy fellowships, expert panel and advisory board memberships, government research learning objectives and Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)
Search by keyword, or paste in a blurb or abstract to find relevant policy engagement opportunities
Filter and explore policy engagement opportunities by type, for example calls for evidence
Filter policy engagement opportunities by country, organisation, application deadline and more
Find relevant scholars from your institution quickly and easily. Our innovative matching tools helps you identify which of your researchers might be suited to policy engagement opportunities.
We use data from Open Alex to find researchers linked to your institution, and analyse their research outputs to establish if their experience and knowledge fits the engagement opportunity.
Matched profiles include key facts, including career stage and scholarly interests, helping you to pinpoint the most relevant expert for each opportunity.
Your subscription to Overton Engage includes a suite of training materials to help develop skills and knowledge in policy engagement and research translation.
This will include guidance on communication and diffusion strategies as well as advice on how to embed the pursuit of impact into the research process. This helps ensure that researchers can respond appropriately and quickly to the opportunities.
Share directly with your faculty or use to complement your existing external engagement modules.
Whether your institution has an experienced policy team or you’re just starting out, we help simplify the process of policy engagement.
Our full list of engagement opportunities are accessible with any type of account, though the interface can be altered depending on your staff’s level of experience. Choose whether your researchers get directed to your own policy office or see the requestor’s contact details to apply directly.
Whatever your subscription type, we help you get organised. You can set up alerts for new engagement opportunities to ensure that you never miss anything. Engagement opportunities can be saved and exported, to apply at a later date or share with colleagues.
Do more, faster.
Policy engagement often relies on being at the right place at the right time. Make sure you are ready to respond.
Overton’s flagship platform enables our users to find policy and track impact, providing tools to analyse how the mechanisms of influence operate and identify how to shape real world decisions. We now offer a more direct way for experts to connect with decision makers, via Overton Engage – the world’s only database of policy engagement opportunities.
With this new tool, we hope to democratise policy engagement – making it easier for experts to connect with decision makers. This helps to ensure that a more diverse range of voices are represented and so broaden policymakers’ understanding of a given issue.
Institutions can sign up now for an extended free trial, running from June until September.
Then, your institution can subscribe to retain full access (at a discounted ‘early adopter’ price, for the duration of our pilot period) or downgrade to the free access level.
The free level provides basic access and allows users to browse opportunities, but does not offer any of the matching or training features. This basic tier is available via the Overton app – just sign up for a free account and explore the listings now.
Institutions can get additional discounts by bundling their Overton Engage subscription with Overton Index. Get in touch to find out more!
Overton connects research with policy.
The Overton Index is the world’s largest database of policy and grey literature, connected to all the evidence it references. Overton Engage is a database of policy engagement opportunities designed to connect researchers with government decision makers.
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