Using Policy Commons in Your Research and Instruction
Using Policy Commons in Your Research and Instruction
Policy Commons makes hard-to-find, fast-moving “fugitive" literature—government reports, NGO publications, white papers, blogs, and technical documents—just as easy to discover and cite as journal articles. Covering materials from tens of thousands of organizations worldwide, the platform bridges academic research with real-world impact and preserves content that is often missing from traditional databases.
What’s inside Policy Commons
Policy Commons captures tens of millions of items from governments, agencies, NGOs, think tanks, corporations, and research centers, and the database is continually growing. This is "grey" literature, content that is hard to find and often doesn't appear in books or journals. Materials are enriched with permanent Content Object Identifiers (COIs), MARC records, and metadata for easy discovery and citing.
- Policy papers and white papers – Recommendations and applied analyses from governments, NGOs, and think tanks
- Research reports and case studies – Feasibility studies, consultant reports, and community impact assessments
- Guidelines, protocols, and manuals – Training materials, health promotion literature, and methodology papers
- Performance data and surveillance reports – Economic indicators, disease surveillance, pilot-project results, and monitoring data
- Community assessments and action plans – Local health needs assessments, environmental reviews, and improvement plans
- Industry and corporate reports – Applied research and innovations from companies and experts
- Blogs, newsletters, and commentary – Insights, analyses, and emerging discussions not covered in journals
- Podcasts and videos – Briefings, presentations, and interviews with practitioners and policymakers
- Archived or “lost” content – Preserved materials from defunded projects or inactive organizations
- Datasets and tables – Reports with data tables, searchable and exportable to CSV format
Tools to elevate your research
Setting alert notifications – Stay up to date by following specific organizations, topics, custom searches, or curated lists. Schedule to receive alerts daily, weekly, or monthly when new publications are added.
Create custom Commons Lists– Curate and organize key resources into reading lists, course materials, systematic reviews, or project collections, all with tools for sharing.
Tabular extraction – Quickly locate datasets from tables in reports, and and export them to CSV format for analysis.
Upload content – Share your institution’s reports, datasets, or case studies. Every item you upload is indexed, enriched, and assigned a permanent content object identifier (COI), making it discoverable and citable globally.
Global coverage and translation – Access materials from tens of thousands of organizations worldwide, including non-English reports with titles and summaries translated into English.
How you can use Policy Commons
Students and educators
- Find practical, real-world insights for papers and projects—often long before they appear in journals.
- Explore community-level reports, policy briefs, and impact assessments.
- Curate and share lists of resources for classes, assignments, or group projects.
- Build course reserves and teaching lists using reports, policy briefs, and case studies.
Researchers conducting systematic or literature reviews
- Discover up to forty percent more content than is found traditional databases, including items from the Global South and non-English sources.
- Follow custom searches to stay updated on new publications.
- Use Boolean and proximity operators for precise retrieval.
- Apply the tabular extraction filter to locate and export tables to CSV format
- Upload your own institutional content to share with the global research community.
Government and policy libraries
- Access current government and NGO reports for policy and program design.
- Set up alerts to monitor key topics (e.g., AI governance, climate policy, public health).
- Curate lists of essential documents for teams, committees, or projects.
Begin exploring
- Go to: https://policycommons.net
- Register or log in with your institutional email address.
- Start exploring. Search, filter, follow, and save materials for your research or teaching.
Need help? Contact us at support@coherentdigital.net or schedule a custom platform training for your organization here.
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