Overton for researchers

Understand the pathways to policy impact

Overton collects millions of policy documents and links them to the research, people and other policy documents that cite them. Overton is used by researchers to study the dynamics of real world policymaking and to track the impact of their own work on policy.

Drive research excellence and impact

We offer a 30 day free trial of Overton so you can explore the data and see what’s possible. Fill in the form below and we’ll get you set up.

Discover policy documents and grey literature from around the world and manage them in one place

Find and evidence the impact of your work for use in grant applications and evaluations

Understand the policy landscape in your field to find out who to work with to achieve policy impact 

Decolonise your research and teaching methods – our broad range of policy sources and complex search capabilities can introduce alternative perspectives and remove publication bias when studying a topic

Overton gives you

  • Access to over 11M full text policy documents and grey literature from 32,000 organisations in 188 countries
  • Our rich and extensive dataset helps you uncover documents from sources that are typically difficult to find – several manuals including the Cochrane Handbook and PRISMA for systematic review protocol recommend and incorporate the use of grey literature searching to complement academic searching
  • Sophisticated filters and analysis tools which help you fulfil complex searches and evaluate data more comprehensively
  • Full text indexing of policy documents, which improves your research capabilities and helps you find additional citations and mentions which aren’t picked up automatically
  • The ability to search for topics, universities, specific DOIs, PMIDs & ISBNs or individual researchers to get an overview of your institution’s policy activity
  • Responsive and comprehensive support from our friendly team of experts
  • Summary reports, Powerpoint slides and email alerts to keep track and report on new mentions of your work in policy
  • CSV exports, RSS feeds and API access to bring the data into your own systems
  • Our commitment to constantly update and grow our database – we will add up to 7 sources within 7 days for you each year
  • A site licence for institutional subscriptions – prices are based on research intensity. Contact us to find out more

Who are Overton? 

We’re the world’s largest searchable policy database, typically returning 3x more data than similar products. Our platform is truly global, collecting policy documents from over 188 countries and dozens of different languages.

We then automatically find the references to your scholarly research and mentions of your academics by name. Importantly we also find the links between policy documents – often research is picked up by intermediaries like think tanks and agencies before being cited by other policy sources – giving you unparalleled insight into how your university is engaging with decision-makers.

We characterise a ‘policy document’ as a ‘publication written by or primarily for policymakers’. This means we track everything from white papers, draft bills and transcripts from governments to things like policy briefs from think tanks, working papers from central banks and even clinical guidelines from health agencies. This is a broad definition that gives a clearer picture of the way  ideas and influence spread through different policy actors and sources.

Learn how evidence informs decisions. Discover the biggest collection of policy documents and hard to find grey literature. Track impact and evidence your institution’s influence. Overton brings transparency to policymaking.

Our clients include

Request a free trial

We offer a fully featured 30 day trial of Overton so that you can explore the data for yourself and see what's possible. Fill in the form below and we'll get you set up.

Have questions? We’re happy to help!​