Policy citation databases offer new ways to understand the impact of social sciences research

Tracking the policy impact of academic research is notoriously difficult, especially when academics are not directly involved in policymaking processes. However, the recent development of tools to index and organise online policy documents has cast new insights into how research, particularly in the social sciences is used in policy. Commenting on a recent study carried out using Overton.io, Martin Szomszor, highlights how social science research outperforms other fields of research in terms of policy impact and how by tracing policy impacts it is possible to produce more nuanced pictures of research impact outside of the dominant anglophone research landscape.