Overton

You can search Overton by Policy documents, People and Scholarly Documents. 

1. Create an account
2. If you’ve already created an account login to Overton.io  before you search.  This allows you to save your searches and create email alerts.

Search by author name

1. Select the 'Search People' tab.
2. Type the name of the researcher into the search box and click, 'Search people'.
3. If there are several entries for the researcher, select all that apply.
4. At the top of the results list, click 'Explore', then 'See policy documents linked to the selected people'.
5. You can use the filters on the left side to refine your search.

There are limitations to searching for citations to an author’s publications in this way.  It is recommended that you search using their ORCID iD and/or DOIs from their publications to get a more complete view of citing policy documents. 

Search by scholarly identifier (DOI, ORCID, PMID, ISBN OR PMCID)

1. Select 'Search scholarly articles' tab.
2. Click on 'Search by DOI, ORCID, PMID or ISBN'
3. Copy and paste the scholarly identifiers (one per line) into the search box and click, 'Search for these identifiers'. 
4. Use the filters on the left to refine your search if necessary.
5. To see the policy citing the documents, click on ‘Explore’ and then ‘See the policy citing these papers’.

You can export a list of publications with DOIs from most databases, including Scopus and Web of Science.  You can also export a list of your publications with DOIs from QUT ePrints.  You can search using an author’s ORCID iD and a list of DOIs at the same time.

Search for policy documents

Use this search to find policy documents on a topic or to find researchers contributing to that area. 

1. Click on the ‘Search policy documents’ tab.
2. Enter the keywords into the search box.
3. Use the filters on the left to refine your search further, if necessary.
4. Click on ‘Explore’ to find authors that have been cited in the policy documents, or to see the documents that have been cited in the policy documents.

Save searches and set up alerts

1. All searches can be saved.  To save a search click on ‘Save search’.
2. You’ll be taken to the ‘Your saved searches’ section of the landing page.  Here you can set up alerts or access your searches.  You can also edit and delete the searches.

Manage and export results

1. Check that there are no duplicates among the results.  Often the same document can be found on multiple websites, and Overton does not disambiguate.
2. To export results, click on ‘Export’ and select the format.  You can choose from Excel, CSV, PowerPoint or RIS to be added to a reference manager.

Create a report

1. On the results page, click on the ‘See report’.
2. All sections of the report can be exported.
3. Click on ‘Save this report’, to save the report.
4. To share the report click on ‘Export’ and ‘Share this report’ to share with other people.

QUT users only: The three videos at the bottom of the page are cut from a webinar on Overton. They include how to do a basic search, how to search for scholarly documents using digital identifiers and how to search for people using name variations. More videos from the webinar are available on MediaHub. (QUT login required).