A list of recent data updates, fixes and new product functionality
We update this page regularly with details of the important data updates, fixes and new features added to Overton. An easy way to keep up to date is to sign up for our newsletter, which will highlight any major changes to the app or data.
We deploy changes to Overton daily: there isn’t a fixed release cycle and typically new features are released as soon as they are tested and pass QA. This page lists the work we’ve done in 2023: there are other pages for previous years.
If you’ve got any questions about any of the items below please reach out to support or your account manager and they’ll be happy to help.
Recent updates
August 2023
- Overton has launched a new SDG classifier which enables our users to get some understanding on how policy documents can be linked to SDGs. This functionality is still in beta and we’re still experimenting with ways to improve precision and recall. More detailed information can be found here.
July 2023
- Users now have the option to select multiple items when using Overton’s filters.
June 2023
- Users are now able to configure and receive email alerts for search queries in the ‘Scholarly Articles Cited in Policy’ search.
- Users are now able to tag/bookmark article results in the ‘Scholarly Articles Cited in Policy’ search.
May 2023
- We have added the ability for users to bulk export (up to 1K) policy document and scholarly articles results in RIS format.
- Users can now send CSV exports of policy documents or scholarly articles to an email of choice.
April 2023
- We have added a new facet in “Search Scholarly Articles” search for “Open Access Status”. Users can now see the different Open Access types for scholarly article results. The underlying OA status information comes from OpenAlex.
March 2023
- We have added a new index for tracked funders of research cited in policy. The index of research funders can be accessed by navigating to ‘Browse’ in the platform.
- We’ve added the cited_by document “topics” to the articles API output
- We’ve added each person’s “top subject” to the people page’s API endpoint
February 2023
- We’ve added a new “language” column to policy document exports, allowing you to see which languages they are written in.
- We fixed a bug that resulting in incorrect policy citation counts that occurred when an “invalid” document (a document without a title or date) contained citations. These are now ignored until the invalid document is fixed.
- We did two pieces of work around “highlights” – the parts of the app that show you where or why your query matched a result.
- We added it to the API output, previously it was only visible in the Overton web app
- We added some user specific flags to return more than just one sentence on either side of the match for full text queries. More the one sentence gives you a bit more context for the match and is useful for e.g. text mining use cases.
January 2023
- We fixed the Government of Canada “2002 bulge”: a lot of documents from this source had 2002 as a date as this was when the new gov.ca document repository launched (we think) leading to incorrect publication dates in their metadata.
- We added Gulf States, Arab League and Middle East as geographic regions in the app, so you can quickly see policy just from these countries.
- We’ve added support for “home” journals, publishers, funders and policy sources. If you have a home organization set it is pinned to the top of the relevant facet in the sidebar making it easier to find relevant documents.