This is intended as general guidance for how to reference data from Overton. There is a wide range of referencing styles (some of which have multiple editions) which are used in academia.
As such, your own university librarians are your resident experts on referencing and should be consulted if you have any doubts.
Referencing Overton as a database
Below you will find some Overton specific information for the common elements used to create a database reference.
Author: Overton
Publisher: Open Policy Ltd.
Location or place of publication: ‘Online’
Date: use the date that the database was accessed
Below is an example of how to reference Overton as a database in Harvard Referencing Style.
Overton. (2024) Open Policy Ltd. Available at: https://app.overton.io/dashboard.php (Accessed: 18 March 2024)
Referencing policy documents found in Overton
Policy documents differ from academic articles in a lot of ways, from who produces them, to the review processes they go through, to even the length of the research.
Citing the policy documents you find in Overton should follow standard referencing guidance. Here is some additional guidance for referencing Overton data:
- Authorship of policy documents can be tricky to ascertain. When in doubt, refer to the organisation that produced the policy document (e.g. World Health Organisation) as the author.
- There are also different types of policy documents in Overton including reports, clinical guidance, government transcripts etc. so ensure you’re aware of the type of document you are citing.
- Overton provides the link to the original webpage of the policy document, you can use this link or the link to the document in Overton in your reference.
- If you require ‘peer reviewed’ search for your research, please be aware that policy documents do not necessarily undergo the same kind of peer review process used for scholarly article publishing. It isn’t to say the data is less reliable, but rather the review processes may be different.
The following is an example of how to cite a policy document in Harvard Referencing Style.
World Health Organisation (2001) Planning a World Health Day Activity: Toolkit for organisers Available at: https://app.overton.io/document.php?policy_document_id=who-39f6b945bded778cc2dc5b11412b4bed (Accessed: 18 March 2024).
Referencing images from Overton
We are happy for users to use the images generated by our summary reports in their own research and reporting. If using the map found in our summary report, here are some things to note:
- The dots on the map represent the countries where the policy documents in your results set come from.
- If you have policy documents from the policy source ‘IGO,’ the map dot that represents ‘IGO’ will be located in the USA.
- We recommend including the clarifying table underneath the map image to ensure transparency of the data represented
Example image reference
Overton (2024) Map Image for Summary Report on Documents matching the query ‘”AI” OR “Artificial Intelligence” OR “Machine learning”‘ and connected to Northumbria University [figure] Available at: https://app.overton.io/documents.php?query=%22AI%22+OR+%22Artificial+Intelligence%22+OR+%22Machine+learning%22&open_affiliations=Northumbria+University&sort=relevance&format=report
If you need to include a figure caption to the image, this can be:
Overton, ‘Map of countries producing policy documents’ (2024)
RIS export to citation management tools
Overton doesn’t have automatic reference generation. If you use referencing tools such as Endnote, RefWorks or Zotero, you can use the ‘Export to RIS’ option. This will generate a file compatible with many citation management tools.
If you have a small number of documents you want to export from a full set of search results, you may want to utilise the ‘Tag this’ function.
Tagging documents allows you to create virtual folders of specific results. Once you have tagged all relevant documents, you can simply click on the relevant ‘Tag’ from your ‘Your Tags and Highlights’ filter and export the relevant results from there.
