OpenAlex is an open, freely available database that maps global research output and the relationships between it. It brings together information on scholarly works such as articles, books, and datasets, with details about authors, institutions, journals, funders and research topics.
Research metadata in Overton
Overton uses OpenAlex as a key source of structured research metadata. In particular, it helps us identify and organise information about academic publications, authors and their institutional affiliations and research funders. This supports Overton’s ability to reliably match research outputs to the people and organisations behind them, ensuring accurate attribution and consistent identification.
If users notice an error in scholarly article data in Overton, it is likely that this is an error that has carried over. Researchers and organisations can also work directly with OpenAlex to optimise their institutional data or correct errors.
ROR
Both Overton and OpenAlex use ROR for institutional data. ROR provides a global, open system of unique IDs for research organisations like universities, hospitals, and labs. OpenAlex incorporates these ROR IDs to standardise how institutions are represented, which helps avoid confusion caused by name variations (for example, “MIT” vs. “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”).
Linking institutional data to a stable identifier like ROR, makes it easier to:
- consistently identify the same organisation across datasets
- merge or compare institutional data reliably
- track research outputs and affiliations without ambiguity
Overton profiles
Users who want to set-up their profile in Overton can conduct a name search powered by OpenAlex.
OpenAlex to find DOIs
Users can search with a list of their publications’ DOIs to search with in Overton.
How are OpenAlex and Overton different?
OpenAlex and Overton both include research data, but serve different purposes and audiences. OpenAlex is an open database of global scholarly information. Its goal is to comprehensively map academic research (papers, authors, institutions, citations, and topics) and make that data freely available for anyone to use.
Overton is a specialised platform that focuses on policy documents including policy-to-policy citations and policy-to-scholarly-article citations. Overton users can see how research is used in policy and public decision-making. Instead of cataloguing all academic research, Overton specifically tracks academic work that is cited in policy documents.
In short, OpenAlex describes the research world itself, while Overton shows how that research travels beyond academia into policy and real-world impact.