Award-winning Sage policy profiles adds nearly 3 million data sources highlighting researcher impact

Six months after release, Sage Policy Profiles has helped over 14,000 researchers find where their work is cited in policy documents globally and for free. Powered by Overton, the world’s largest collection of policy documents, Sage Policy Profiles now indexes more than 13.4 million policy documents. It has also improved coverage around the world including new sources from government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations, in Germany, Morocco, Spain, and Brazil.  

Sage Policy Profiles is a free, browser-based tool that shows researchers where their work is cited in policy documents, creates a dashboard of those results, and lets researchers export them graphically. It was created to help researchers demonstrate impact and to broaden the research impact conversation from one that centers exclusively on academic citations to one that expands to include impact on policy and the public.  

Sage Policy Profiles received the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Conference, highlighting it as an innovative tool making positive impact on scholarly communications. 

“Researchers have struggled for years to be able to show the policy impact of their work. This tool aggregates such information in a useful way showing the diverse ways in which science is applied,” said Dr. Steven Cooke, Canada research professor in environmental science and biology at Carleton University. “Sage Policy Profiles revealed a bunch of surprises. I had no idea the ways in which my work was being used by policy makers and decision makers not just in Canada, but around the world.” 

“Sage Policy Profiles enhances my research impact by connecting it to broader discussions about the world,” said Dr. Alyasah Sewell, associate professor of sociology at Emory University. “I now describe my expertise not only through academic fields and data but also by the keywords policy advocates use. My work as a medical sociologist intersects with public messaging on policing, bioethics, and structural racism.” 

While Sage Policy Profiles is free for use by any researcher across the globe, Sage created it knowing that social and behavioral science – which often go underfunded – makes an outsized impact on policy.  

Create a Sage Policy Profiles account for free on Social Science Space.    

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Sage is a global academic publisher of books, journals, and library resources with a growing range of technologies to enable discovery, access, and engagement. Believing that research and education are critical in shaping society, 24-year-old Sara Miller McCune founded Sage in 1965. Today, we are controlled by a group of trustees charged with maintaining our independence and mission indefinitely.  

Our guaranteed independence means we’re free to: 

• Do more – supporting an equitable academic future, furthering disciplines that drive social change, and helping social and behavioral science make an impact 

• Work together – building lasting relationships, championing diverse perspectives, and co-creating resources to transform teaching and learning 

• Think long-term – experimenting, taking risks, and investing in new ideas 

Overton is the world’s largest collection of policy documents, parliamentary transcripts, government guidance, and think tank research. We make this data available through the Overton.io web application, reports, and an API. Our users include funders, universities, academic journals, and journalists.