New feature: It’s now easier to see policy that has been cited within another policy document

We want to make it easier to trace the evolution of policy, not just from academic research to policy, but also the links between policy documents themselves.

With this in mind, we recently added a new feature that enhances the visibility of these policy to policy networks within Overton.

Previously you could search for policy documents that cite a given cohort of policy documents, but if you wanted to see the ‘backwards’ citations (ie the policy the cohort itself cited) it required several steps.

Now you can quickly run that ‘backwards’ policy citations search from the ‘Explore’ menu: 

We’ve also made it easier to see where ‘backwards’ policy citations are, making it more obvious within the search results – policy cited within a document is now listed alongside scholarly work cited within that document: 

Together these changes make Overton much more useful for policy organisations, and they also make it much easier for researchers and institutions to understand how to influence government policy. For example:

1. Finding recent government policy documents on a topic (which might cite very few articles directly)
2. Then finding policy documents cited by those documents (and maybe filter to think tanks or IGOs) – ie the organisations that academics could use to try to get their research across to policymakers

Whilst we have suggested one potential use case for this feature in the blog, should you like some further information or have an alternative idea that you’d like to explore with one of our team, please do feel free to get in touch by email on support@overton.io – we’d love to hear from you!