Overton -- A bibliometric database of policy document citations

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the Overton policy document database, describing the makeup of materials indexed and the nature in which they cite academic literature. We report on various aspects of the data, including growth, geographic spread, language representation, the range of policy source types included, and the availability of citation links in documents. Longitudinal analysis over established journal category schemes is used to reveal the scale and disciplinary focus of citations and determine the feasibility of developing field-normalized citation indicators. We examine how well self-reported funding outcomes collected by UK funders corresponds to data indexed in the Overton database, and if peer-review assessment of impact as measured by the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 correlates with derived citation metrics. Our findings show that for some research topics, such as health, economics, social care and the environment, Overton contains a core set of policy documents with sufficient citation linkage to academic literature to support various citation analysis that may be informative in research evaluation, impact assessment, and policy review. The data indexed in Overton agrees with that collected via self-reporting of funding outcomes, and correlates with peer-review assessment of impact in some disciplines.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early career researcher activity, development, career, and well-being: the state of the art

“…insert Figure 1 about here Stage 1: We searched three online databases: Scopus and Web of Science, which are considered the most comprehensive bibliographic databases suited for this review (Pranckutė, 2021;Zhu and Liu, 2020) and the Overton policy database, which contains a core set of policy documents with sufficient citation linkage to academic literature (Szomszor and Adie, 2022). Through the searches, we identified 242 publications from Scopus, 84 from Web of Science, and 0 from Overton.…”

Comparing coverage of policy citations to scientific publications in Overton and Altmetric.com

“…A total of 18,996 Scopus publications of all document types for 18 most prolific Finnish universities and institutes were selected in 8 social science fields based on the highly policy cited fields reported in Szomszor and Adie (2022). The DOIs of these publications were searched for on Altmetric.com explorer and Overton policy citations.…”

“…Overton, however, is a more recent service that is tracking only policy citations and is building a much broader coverage. Overton also tracks the reverse citations from scholarly publications to policy documents and policy-to-policy citations (Szomszor & Adie, 2022). Dimensions of Digital Science also includes policy citations along with the full-text of policy documents, but it only offers policy documents in English language from Altmetric.com.…”

Assemblages of language, impact and research

“…Language in these situations may be flexibly chosen depending on context and the mode of stakeholder contacts; in nation state contexts, the ideals of democratic participation (see Brossard et al, 2009) often imply the use of national languages. Overton (https://www.overton.io/) is currently the world's largest database of policy document citations (including policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications, and working papers), which can be used in evaluating research, assessing impact, and reviewing policy (Szomszor & Adie, 2022). The database uses non-traditional, alternative metrics (altmetrics), measuring socio-economic impact faster and more comprehensively by looking at the whole process of research and collaboration.…”