Policy and Society Frameworks and Indicators
As you think through ways to demonstrate policy and societal impact, be sure to look at evaluation frameworks to get ideas for research impact indicators.
Keep in mind that searching for this content is rarely linear. Mentions of research outputs in the resources below may use the author's name, or the title of the study--or just the university.
Below you will find examples of tools to use, and you can learn more about alternative indicators here.
Highlighted Resource: Overton
Overton is the world’s largest collection of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. This interdisciplinary database provides value in two main ways.
Using Overton, you can:
- Track Policy Influence and Impact: Allows you to see where scholarly work is cited in policy documents.
- Search for Policy Documents: Search or browse policy documents across all disciplines.
*One year trial through March 15, 2023.
- Overton.io This link opens in a new windowProvides the world's largest collection of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications, and working papers. One year trial ending March 15, 2023.
- Advanced Search FeaturesLearn how to search in specific fields, conduct proximity searches, search within a specific domain, and more!
Tools to Identify Mentions, Citations, and Downloads
The resources below will help you see whether your research has been cited in policy documents.
- Overton.io This link opens in a new windowDatabase containing policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications, and working papers.
- Dimensions Plus This link opens in a new windowBrings together various research-related data sources, such as grant information, books, journal articles, conference proceedings, and patents.
- Altmetric Explorer This link opens in a new windowBrowse, search, and query mentions of publications in news, social media, policy documents, and more!
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to over 15,000 sources of news, business, legal, and reference information worldwide.
The resources below will help you see whether your research has been mentioned in news resources or social media (Altmetric Explorer). Learn more about Altmetric Explorer and alternative metrics.
- Altmetric Explorer This link opens in a new windowBrowse, search, and query mentions of publications in news, social media, policy documents, and more!
- Access World News [NewsBank] This link opens in a new windowFull text of 600+ U.S. newspapers and 260+ English-language newspapers from other countries worldwide.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to over 15,000 sources of news, business, legal, and reference information worldwide.
- ProQuest Newsstand This link opens in a new windowFull text of 1,300+ English-language newspapers from across the U.S. and around the world.
Use the resources below to identify usage statistics for your datasests.
- Data Citation Index This link opens in a new windowSearchable descriptions of 1 million+ datasets in all subject areas from 69 repositories, plus citations to publications using the data.
- ICPSR Data RepositoryThe Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. ICPSR hosts several specialized collections of health science data, including:
- FigshareA repository where users can make research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner.
The resources below will let you see where your journal article has been cited.
- Dimensions Plus This link opens in a new windowBrings together various research-related data sources, such as grant information, books, journal articles, conference proceedings, and patents.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowInternational multi-disciplinary indexing & abstracting database for scientific, medical, technical, and social sciences.
- Google Scholar @ U-M (with U-M Ann Arbor MGet It Links) This link opens in a new windowSearches for scholarly documents on the web, with the added feature of "Availability at UMichigan" links.
The resources below will help you see whether your research has been mentioned in legislation.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to over 15,000 sources of news, business, legal, and reference information worldwide.
- ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new windowIncludes bills, laws, Congressional publications, hearings, reports, Congressional Record, CRS Reports and executive agency documents.
What are Alternative Metrics?
Alternative metrics (altmetrics) are public engagement indicators that measure interactions with publications in non-scholarly venues like blogs, tweets, article downloads, and shares.
Altmetrics can help researchers to tell a story about how people are engaging with their research outside of traditional academic paths such as citations and conferences. Altmetrics, such as mentions of research articles in YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, tweets, or major news outlets, provide a qualitative complement to traditional quantitative measures like citation counts.
- PaperbuzzEnter a paper's DOI to see how a paper is being talked about online. Note that results are incomplete for articles published before 2017.
- ImpactStory ProfilesTrack your buzz on Twitter, blogs, news outlets and more.
- Plum AnalyticsNow owned by Elsevier and integrated into their platforms, Plum Analytics gathers data about usage of data sets, open access publications, presentations, blogs, and other types of scholarly communication.
- Snowball MetricsA research metrics initiative led by research universities around the world working to establish global standards to enable institutional benchmarking. The University of Michigan is a member of the Snowball Metrics United States Working Group.
- Altmetric ExplorerBrowse, search, and query "mentions" on the web of publications etc. by researchers at U-M and elsewhere. Once in the database, create a personal account in order to export results and save searches and alerts.
Highlighed Resource: Altmetric Explorer for Institutions
Altmetric Explorer for Institutions tracks attention around your research publications in social media, news, and policy resources.
- Altmetric ExplorerBrowse, search, and query "mentions" on the web of publications etc. by researchers at U-M and elsewhere. Once in the database, create a personal account in order to export results and save searches and alerts.