Tracking policy citations is a great way to see how your research is being applied in real-world contexts and see what differences it has made. Here we outline some of the main tools which you can use to track citations of your work in policy.

Sage Policy Profiles

Sage recently released a tool to support researchers in demonstrating their impact or influence on policy. Once registered, users can search via their name or ORCID identifier to find a summary of policy documents citing or mentioning the researcher, and also mapping the citations. The data is drawn from the world’s largest database of policy documents, compiled by Overton. This is a great tool to view policy-related data from various sources in one place.

Altmetric

Altmetric (the colourful ‘donut’ next to an output in Research Portal) includes references to your work found in policy sources designed to influence guidelines, policy and practice. This is a useful tool to find policy documents relating to a specific publication. Once you click through to Altmetric from the donut, the relevant Policy Documents will be linked, as well as any other sources found by Altmetric. 

Altmetric draws information from “government guidelines, reports or white papers; independent policy institute publications; advisory committees on specific topics; research institutes; and international development organisations.” You can find out more about their data sources here.

PlumX

The PlumX ‘Plum Print’ is the other icon you will come across in Research Portal. Their policy data draws from Overton, and you can find out more about their wider data sources here. As with Altmetric, PlumX links through to the data sources which it has found.

Hansard

Hansard online is a searchable report of what is said in Parliament. You can use the website to search for keywords related to your research or for your name or a project name, for example, to find occasions in which your work has influenced conversation in Parliament. Rolling updates are posted so that you can see what has been said within three hours, and daily debates are published on Hansard the next working day.

Hansard can help to trace pathways from research to impact, as well as identifying useful contacts who are engaged with your work or relevant topics and may be interested in conversation around taking your work further.

What else?

There may be occasions when you are invited to contribute to discussions or attend events. Consider how this could contribute to developing your impact and bridge potential gaps in the pathway shown by citations alone. 

If you have an account with Overton, this can be a useful resource for tracking impact. Overton links policy documents to research, people, and other policy documents. It features some interesting features such as mapped citations and summary reports. Several of the other tools mentioned here draw data from Overton, so it may be simpler to use these tools.

If you’re aiming to impact government policy and are still in the process of getting there, check out our resources on Planning impact involving government policy and our guidance on Communicating with policymakers to generate impact.