By Yeo Pin Pin, Head, Research Services
Traditional citations from citation indexes like Web of Science or Scopus only include citations from other academic papers.
While this is important, such indicators only measure "use" in academia. One way to go beyond academic impact is to track citation use in policy documents from organisations/institutes such as IGOs, NGOs, governments, and think tanks, which may arguably better measure societal impact.
Making use of Overton, we take a dive into who is citing works with SMU affiliation in the policy documents covered by Overton.
What is Overton?
Overton is a searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, publications and working papers from 182 countries and over a thousand sources worldwide. You can access Overton via SMU subscription.
SMU publications most cited by policy document generating institutions (NGOs, IGOS, Governments, Thinktanks etc)
NBER, the European Union and IFO Institute are the top three institutions that generate public policy documents (including white papers and reports) which cited SMU publications.
Others in the top 20 includes, Government of Singapore, OECD, Bank of Finland. The chart shows the institutions with 20 or more citations.
The chart shows the institutions with 20 or more citations.
By type of policy document generating institution
Think tanks produce policy documents that cite SMU Publications the most. This is followed by government, intergovernmental organisations (IGO) and banks.
By country of policy document generating institution
Which countries do the organisations that generate policy documents come from? The countries with the most citations to SMU publications are Germany, United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore.
When looking at one individual name, the following information is available in the filters on the left hand menu. For example, for Professor Phang Sock Yong, her publications were cited by government, think tanks and IGOs. The institutions included Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and Korean Development Institute which shows how her work has possibly influenced Asian Banks and governments.
Explore Overton today.