Tampere University impacts global policy developments

Overton is the world’s largest collection of policy documents, parliamentary transcripts, government guidance and think tank publications. It contains more than sixteen million policy documents from over 27,000 organisations in more than 180 countries.

Overall during 2020-2025, research at Tampere University was cited in more than 6700 documents (26 February, 2025) produced and enacted by government and official bodies, non-governmental organizations, IGOs such as EU, WHO, UN, and think tanks. These policy papers address diverse topical issues within health, economics, energy, social care, and the environment. The policy papers cite the most research outputs published in social science and humanities journals, followed by health sciences and life sciences. 

The publications of research projects on highly specific topics can influence policy making in multiple areas, which may differ significantly from the original field of research. For instance, publications from the EU Horizon 2020 project A-WEAR on dynamic wearable applications with privacy constraints have been cited in policy documents on data economy, occupational health and textile economy. These policy documents were published by the European Commission and other organisations in Finland, Singapore, the Netherlands and USA.

An important measure of societal impact for policy is their relevance to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which are easily tracked through Overton for submitted policies and the research they cite. For instance, ~170 policy documents citing publications by Professor Juho Hamari on Gamification are tagged through Overton (26 February, 2025) for SDGs:

• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities,
• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being,
• SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG
• SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. 

In addition to this undirected influencing of policy making, our researchers publish targeted policy briefs and are in dialogue with and provide expert recommendations to policy makers. This reflects the university’s strong commitment to its strategy to not only be a global leader in producing high-impact, world-class research, but also actively contribute to social impact and development across local and global scales.