Academic publisher Sage has launched Sage Policy Profiles, a free web-based tool that allows researchers to track their impact on policy. The tool, which is accessible to any researcher after registration, allows searches by name or ORCID identifier across a database of 10.2 million policy documents compiled by UK start-up Overton, the world’s largest such index. It provides a summary of policy documents that reference the researcher’s work, shedding light on how policymakers use their research. Sage Policy Profiles presents these insights through a personalized dashboard, from which researchers can export citations and visualize their policy impact.
The company believes this will help broaden the conversation about research impact to focus not only on scientific advances, but also on contributions to policy, practice, and the public. Sage hopes to continue investing in the tool if researchers find it useful.
According to a Nature article, shortcomings of the tool include that users can only access their own citations and mentions, rather than searching for citations of specific papers or those of other scientists; it often gives the reference list of a document rather than the page on which the research is cited; it relies on freely available online policy papers published within the last decade, mainly in Western countries; and it is not clear how important a particular paper is to a piece of legislation that cites it.
- Sagee Publishing, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA
- SagePolicyProfiles
- News: Has your research influenced policy? Use this free tool to check,
Dalmeet Singh Chawla
Nature December 19, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-04070-7
