The University ran a 4-week trial to Overton, during March/April 2024, open to all Durham students and staff. We will be re-opening a shorter trial period between 3rd and 17th June 2024.
To access Overton, please follow the link below and then register a personal account using your Durham email address.
Durham University: Overton Trial Registration
Overton is the world’s largest searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. It collects millions of policy documents and links them to the research, people and other policy documents that they quote or reference.
Overton is used by:
To find grey literature which may be relevant to assignments or dissertation research. This can be done by searching by keyword, organisation or by entering the details of scholarly articles already located to see if they have been cited within any policy documents within the Overton database.
To find grey literature and study the dynamics of real world policymaking, as well as to track the impact of their own work on policy, supporting grant, promotion and tenure applications.
To easily find out where their work is influencing or changing practice in the real world.
You can view some of the videos on this guide which provide an overview of what Overton has to offer, and examples of how it might be useful for:
Overton also have their own 'Getting Started' guide, which includes examples of how you can:
As with all of our trial resources, if you have made use of the trial access we would love to hear from you. This will help inform our decisions on whether to go ahead with purchasing a licence for ongoing access, and for opportunities to develop our collections further in support of the research and teaching priorities at the University.
To provide us with your thoughts, please complete the form available here.
You can see other resources the University currently has trial access to on our website [current staff and students only].
You may be interested in some of the below resources which Durham Staff and Students already have access to.
