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Getting started for new users

Curated guides of articles and resources to help new users get started using Overton Index

By Euan

• 6 articles

How to access Overton Index

Subscribing institutions have multiple options for logging into Overton. The available access options will depend on the type of subscription that your institution has. Site license (Unlimited seats) IP access Users from organisations with IP access enabled can use the platform without logging in or have the option to create an account. However, users who access Overton without logging in cannot save searches, set up email alerts, or access the API. These features are only available to logged-in users. Open Athens Users from organisations using Open Athens, can locate your organisation’s name in the Open Athens search box on the login page and follow prompts for verification and account setup. Verified email domains Users from organisations with verified email domains can sign up for accounts using their institutional email on the login page. Group invite link Users who have received a unique group invite link from their organisation can use it to create an Overton account using an institutional email. EZProxy Users from organisations with EZProxy enabled can access Overton using their institutional credentials. Team license (Limited seats) Open Athens Users from organisations using Open Athens, can locate your organisation’s name in the Open Athens search box on the login page and follow prompts for verification and account setup. Verified email domains Users from organisations with verified email domains can sign up for accounts using their institutional email on the login page. Group invite link Users who have received a unique group invite link from their organisation can use it to create an Overton account using an institutional email. Trial accounts If your institution doesn’t have an Overton subscription, you can request a free trial account. A trial will let you see how Overton data could help you and your team understand the policy landscape. Learn more about trial accounts here. Contact [email protected] if you would like to learn more about what login options are available for your organisation.

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026

Overton Index Start Page

Learn more about the features and functions of Overton’s main dashboard Start page overview The Overton Index start page includes a number of features that help you get the most out of the platform. Sections of the start page include: Main Menu The menu at the top of the page is consistent across all Index pages. This menu includes the following: Start – Return to the Start Page Discover – Move between the 3 search functions (policy documents, people, scholarly articles) Engage – View Overton Engage Explore the Data – Find/view policy sources, institutions, journals, news outlets, topics, etc. Help – View help pages, how-to guides, and case studies Your Account – View account settings or saved searches, and add works to your profile. Search Box Above the search box, you can navigate between 4 different search functions: Policy Documents, People, Scholarly Articles, and Engagement Opportunities. Keyword Search: Type in the main search box to search for keywords. Overton ID: You can also search for “Overton IDs” – the unique identified assigned to each policy document. Advanced Search: Click “Advanced Search” to learn more about operators and search modes, or to build an advanced query. Discover and Find Shortcuts Below the search box are two shortcuts: (1) Discover your policy citations– Use this to add your DOIs to your Overton profile so that you can quickly explore your citations. (2) Find policy citations for scholarly works – Paste in a list of DOIs (or other identifiers) and search for where they are cited in policy. This feature takes you directly to the policy documents page. We will maintain the full set of IDs so you can set up a saved search here and find when any of your DOIs have been cited in documents in the future. Saved Searches Users can save any search they perform in Overton. Once saved, the appear under this section. Click “View all saved searches” to rename or reorganise the searches and set up email alerts. Example Searches These only appear if your organisation has added them. Some organisations like to provide example searches to help users explore the platform. Saved Reports Users also have the option to save any of the reports they view. Click “View all saved reports” to rename or reorganise the reports and set up email alerts. This only appears after you have saved 1 report. Shortcuts Shortcuts are default searches customised to your organisation or University. They allow you to quickly see the policy documents, scholarly articles, people, and funders related to your organisation.

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026

Saved searches, alerts, tags and highlights

If you have created an Overton account, you are able to customise your search experience in a few different ways. If you are accessing Overton using IP authentication, you will need to create an account in order to access these features. Save a search Once you have run a search for policy documents, authors or scholarly articles, you can save your search from grey bar above the search results list. You can also save a topic search from the Topic Map page, accessing by clicking ‘Explore’ in the grey bar, then ‘Explore topics in these documents’. Finding your saved searches Once you have saved your search, you can find it again from your dashboard, under the search panel. Here you can reorder, rename or delete your searches. Creating an email alert From the dashboard, find Your Saved Searches. Click the button next to the search for which you want to create/edit an alert. You’ll be taken to a page to configure your alerts. Email alerts can be configured for saved search queries from the ‘Policy Documents’ and ‘Scholarly Articles Cited in Policy’ search. Currently email alerts cannot be set up for ‘People’ saved searches. You can choose no emails, weekly emails or monthly emails. You can also decide whether or not you want to be sent an email even if there are no new results. Tagging documents You can create your own tags to organise results from the ‘Policy Documents’ and ‘Scholarly Articles Cited in Policy’ search. You will see a ‘Tag this’ option underneath your search results. When you click ‘Tag This’, you’ll see a window where you can add and remove tags. To view a list of tags, refresh the page and a new filter on the left will appear called ‘Your tags and highlights’ which will allow users to filter for their tagged results. Highlighting citations and mentions within a policy document When you are on the individual policy document page, you will see any relevant citations or mentions (depending on what you have searched). For example, if you searched for policy documents on ‘Finance’ that cite research from your institution, you would see citations and mentions within that document that relate to your institution. Next to the citation or mention, you can click ‘Highlight This’ to save it for later. You can find your highlights from the filter panel on the left hand side of the policy document search page. Make sure to clear all other search terms if you want to see all of your highlighted articles.

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026

Search using your Overton Profile

Once you set up your Overton Profile, you can use it to quickly search for policy documents that cite all or selected published works, helping you track the real-world policy impact of your research. See: [Setting up your Overton Profile ](https://help.overton.io/article/setting-up-your-overton-profile/)to learn how to set-up and manage your Overton Profile From the start page Once you set up your Overton Profile, Overton creates a search shortcut that lets you quickly access policy documents citing your published work. You’ll find this shortcut at the top of the Shortcuts list on the left side of the Start page. From ‘Works & profile’ in Account settings You can also begin a search from the ‘Works & profile’ section in your Account Settings. To find account settings, click on the person icon in the top right of the app. Search for all publications From ‘Works & profile’, you can search for policy citations for all your published works by clicking on ‘Select all’. Search for a subset of publications To search using a subset of your published works, you can either select the relevant works by clicking on the checkboxes beside each entry or use the ‘Filter’ options to find publications based on a shared criteria. Once you have found and selected the relevant publications, use the grey ‘Action’ button to search for the selected works.

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026

Setting up Key Sources

Some policy sources matter more to your organisation than others. To help you focus on the ones that matter most, Overton’s Key Sources feature lets you prioritise selected organisations. For example, you can track a core group of important bodies in your field or monitor key collaborative partners in your regular reports. Viewing and customising your Key Sources Find and set-up your Key Sources list by navigating to ‘Explore the Data’ and selecting ‘Your key sources ‘from ‘Data Indexes’. From here, you can view and manage your Key Sources. Adding to your Key Sources in the Policy Documents Tab You can also add sources to your Key Sources using the ‘From Source’ filter in the Policy Documents tab and click ‘Show more’. Select the sources you are interested in and click ‘Add Selected Sources to your key sources’. Seeing Key Sources while searching for policy documents You can see where a document has been cited by a Key Source when you’re on the search results page. To the right of any document cited by a Key Source, you’ll see a grey box. To see documents published by your Key Sources, use the filter panel on the left hand side of the search results.

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026

Using Overton’s People search

Use our People Search to find individuals or groups cited or mentioned in policy documents. Search with a single name or a list of names to discover evidence of policy attention. This article will explain how the People search works and outline some tips users can employ to get effective and accurate results. How does the People search work? Before you begin a People search, it helps to understand how we populate our “People” data. Here is an overview of how Overton does this: If we can (1) find a DOI associated with a scholarly reference and (2) find affiliation information associated with that DOI in OpenAlex, then a person will appear in the People results. **Se**e - [Authors with no People results & alternative searches](https://help.overton.io/article/why-are-some-authors-not-appearing-in-the-people-tab/) How to run a People search Best Practices There are a few best practices that you can employ to make your People search as effective as possible. Searching for name variants If you have published scholarly work using variants of your name (i.e., your surname changed or you sometimes publish with middle initials) you will want to make sure to include all variants of your name in your People search. The author name data we get in Overton ultimately comes from publishers and is a mix of full first names, initials and middle initials. You can search for variants of your name using the ‘list of names’ search box. And to Searching for names with diacritics Using an accent or diacritic (ex. ë, č, ø) will only return names with those same letters. Searching ‘José Gomez’ will return results for ‘José M Gomez’ and ‘José Gomez-Sanchez’ but not ‘Jose Gomez’. If your name uses diacritics or accents, consider searching for your name using the variants that use diacritics and those that do not to ensure no results are missed. Searching for common names If your name is fairly common, i.e., Alison Smith – consider searching for your policy citations using DOIs or other identifiers like ORCID in our Scholarly Articles search. The reason for this is because you could end up with multiple pages of People results to review in order to find your own results. A further limitation is that users can only select results on one page of People results at one time. It is a known limitation that we are working on. You can search using identifiers from our Start page or from the ‘Scholarly Articles search’ tab under the ‘Discover’ menu. Searching with a list of names This functionality works best for smaller lists of names, i.e., list of name variants. As this method of searching requires an exact match to the names on the list it is not the best way of searching for large lists of individuals. With a large list, it can be difficult to see when there are no results for an individual and therefore, difficult to know if alternative methods of searching will be more useful. If you are wanting to search for large groups of people from your organisation simultaneously, reach out to [email protected] for more specific guidance. Viewing & selecting multiple results A person may appear multiple times in your results if they have published under different affiliations over the years. Select the entries that match the individual you are looking for, then click ‘Explore’ to view the related policy documents or scholarly articles linked to those profiles. ORCID limitation You cannot use an ORCID to search in People. If you want to search using ORCID, you will need to do this in our Scholarly Articles Search. This is a technical limitation. Example People searches The People search is what is called a fuzzy search. Your results will be impacted by the format you use to search for an individual (i.e., full name, initial and surname, etc). To get more matches replace the firstname in your search with the first initial. Here are some example People searches and what results they will yield: People search results People Search results display: - Names that match your search - An affiliation for each individual - The number of cited policy documents - The number of scholarly articles cited in policy - Key sources they appear in and topics of the policy documents they are cited in most If your search returns a single entry for the person you are looking for, click: - The number under Documents to view policy documents that cite or mention them - The number under Articles to view their scholarly publications cited in policy Selecting and viewing multiple results A person may appear multiple times in your results if they have published under different affiliations over the years. Select the entries that match the individual you are looking for, then click ‘Explore’ to view the related policy documents or scholarly articles linked to those profiles. Filter by citations or mentions You can filter results to see only citations or only mentions by clicking on the ‘Type’ filter and selecting ‘Only people cited’ or ‘Only people mentioned.’ See: [What is a People mention?](https://help.overton.io/article/what-is-a-people-mention/) & [How does Overton find people mentioned in policy documents?](https://help.overton.io/article/how-does-overton-find-people-mentioned-in-policy-documents/) Other ways of searching for policy citations The People search is not the only way to find individuals’ policy citations in Overton. There are other methods which are perhaps a bit easier and help avoid some of the issues around common names, name variants or having multiple institutional affiliations. A minimum, researchers should create an Overton Profile to make it easy to search for and track their policy citations. See: [Setting up your Overton Profile](https://help.overton.io/article/setting-up-your-overton-profile/) & [Search using your Overton Profile](https://help.overton.io/article/search-using-your-overton-profile/) All users can also search for citations in policy using DOIs and other identifiers like PMIDs, ORCID or ISBNs either from the Start page or from our Scholarly Articles search. This method is highly effective and avoids issues around name variants. See: [Search using DOIs and other identifiers](https://help.overton.io/article/search-using-dois-and-other-unique-identifiers/)

Last updated on Jun 25, 2026