What is a match and how is it calculated?
Overton Engage uses an innovative matching algorithm that identifies when researchers might be suited to a particular policy engagement opportunity.
How does this work for researchers?
Once a researcher has set up their profile on Overton we use all the data that they have input, including their matching preferences, to find policy engagement opportunities that fit their expertise. See ‘How to set up a researcher profile’ to learn more.
Our matching algorithm uses an embeddings model to analyse the works and information that a researcher has added to their profile. We are then able to match any opportunities in Engage to abstracts from articles and researcher biographies. As a researcher, for opportunities that we think are relevant to your profile, you will be able to see exactly why we believe you matched the opportunity.
How does this work for policy teams?
Policy teams and research offices can easily find relevant experts for engagement opportunities without requiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of academics and their research outputs.
The matched profile includes key information on the researcher including scholarly interests and even previous policy experience.
To provide our list of researchers that are matched to opportunities, available to policy teams, we use data from Open Alex to find researchers and analyse their research output in order to establish if their experience and expertise fits the engagement opportunity. See ‘Open Alex and researcher profiles‘ to learn more.
For each opportunity, we identify the top 100 scholarly works that are most relevant, assigning each a relevancy score. Authors of these scholarly works are then ranked according to the frequency in which they appear within the set and how relevant their respective works are to the opportunity.
We then apply a simple ranking system to help users understand the probability of these matches being suitable for an opportunity. To learn more, see ‘How are matched researchers ordered?‘
Researchers no longer at an institution
Researchers may appear as a match even if they no longer work at a given institution. They will appear if they have published work associated with that institution within the last 3 years.
Why have my matches changed?
We use data from Open Alex to power our matching system. This data is updated as new works are published and our matches will change in line with this.