Science for humanity in practice: understanding the policy influence of Imperial’s SDG-mapped research
Author(s)
Clark, Ross
Ozkan, Yusuf
Type
Report
Abstract
This report examines how Imperial College London’s research reaches policy audiences, and whether the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a useful framework through which to understand that relationship. We use the SDGs not simply as a way of classifying research, but as an analytical lens: one that allows us to trace research concerned with major societal challenges as it moves from academic publication into policy.
The analysis suggests that this lens is a useful one. Imperial research associated with the SDGs is substantially more likely to be cited in policy than research without an SDG association. Focusing on three areas of particular strength at Imperial — health, clean energy and climate action — also reveals a substantial and international policy footprint, while showing how differently research travels through different policy systems. The SDG framework therefore helps us both to map Imperial’s policy engagement and to identify some of the structures that shape it.
We analysed a dataset of 6,934 Imperial journal articles (that were drawn from a broader pool of 40,086 outputs mapped to SDGs 3, 7, and 13) that had been cited in at least one policy document tracked by Overton. This gave us a picture of which research is reaching policy audiences, who is citing it, from where, and how long it takes. The dataset connects three sources of evidence: Imperial's own publication records, SDG classifications from Dimensions, and policy citation data from Overton.
The key findings from our report are as follows:
SDG-linked research is significantly more likely to reach policy. Across Imperial's output, 15.3% of SDG-aligned publications received at least one policy citation, compared with 6.4% of non-SDG-aligned work, and for the three SDGs at the centre of this study, the rate rises to 17.3%.
Policy engagement remains the exception. Of Imperial's 148,216 research outputs indexed in Dimensions (see Figure 2), only 9.1% appear in any policy document. The pipeline from research to policy is long, selective, and slow.
It takes years, not months. The median gap between publication and first policy citation is 829 days, which is roughly two and a half years. This is a structural feature of the research-to-policy pathway, not an anomaly.
Open access outputs dominate policy citations. 89.5% of policy citations in this dataset reference open access outputs. Research that can't be freely read is research that is harder to cite.
Imperial's policy reach is genuinely global, but concentrated. Policy documents citing Imperial's research originate from 134 country classifications and 1,431 institutions. The US and UK account for the largest share, but institutions from across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania also appear in the data.
Internally, policy engagement is broad but led by Medicine. The Faculty of Medicine dominates the dataset, but meaningful policy-cited research originates from all four faculties, and from smaller units like the Centre for Environmental Policy, the Department of Mathematics, and the Business School.
Taken together, these findings confirm that Imperial's research is reaching policy audiences at scale and across a genuinely international landscape. They also raise questions worth sitting with: about the long lag between research and policy uptake, about the concentration of policy engagement within high-income countries, and about the extent to which current measures of research impact capture what is actually happening. Policy citation is a measure of documented engagement, not of influence or outcome.
This report is not simply a retrospective account of what Imperial's research has achieved. It is an attempt to map the research-to-policy pipeline with greater precision than is usually possible, and a test of whether the SDG framework, used carefully, can help institutions do that more systematically.
The analysis suggests that this lens is a useful one. Imperial research associated with the SDGs is substantially more likely to be cited in policy than research without an SDG association. Focusing on three areas of particular strength at Imperial — health, clean energy and climate action — also reveals a substantial and international policy footprint, while showing how differently research travels through different policy systems. The SDG framework therefore helps us both to map Imperial’s policy engagement and to identify some of the structures that shape it.
We analysed a dataset of 6,934 Imperial journal articles (that were drawn from a broader pool of 40,086 outputs mapped to SDGs 3, 7, and 13) that had been cited in at least one policy document tracked by Overton. This gave us a picture of which research is reaching policy audiences, who is citing it, from where, and how long it takes. The dataset connects three sources of evidence: Imperial's own publication records, SDG classifications from Dimensions, and policy citation data from Overton.
The key findings from our report are as follows:
SDG-linked research is significantly more likely to reach policy. Across Imperial's output, 15.3% of SDG-aligned publications received at least one policy citation, compared with 6.4% of non-SDG-aligned work, and for the three SDGs at the centre of this study, the rate rises to 17.3%.
Policy engagement remains the exception. Of Imperial's 148,216 research outputs indexed in Dimensions (see Figure 2), only 9.1% appear in any policy document. The pipeline from research to policy is long, selective, and slow.
It takes years, not months. The median gap between publication and first policy citation is 829 days, which is roughly two and a half years. This is a structural feature of the research-to-policy pathway, not an anomaly.
Open access outputs dominate policy citations. 89.5% of policy citations in this dataset reference open access outputs. Research that can't be freely read is research that is harder to cite.
Imperial's policy reach is genuinely global, but concentrated. Policy documents citing Imperial's research originate from 134 country classifications and 1,431 institutions. The US and UK account for the largest share, but institutions from across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania also appear in the data.
Internally, policy engagement is broad but led by Medicine. The Faculty of Medicine dominates the dataset, but meaningful policy-cited research originates from all four faculties, and from smaller units like the Centre for Environmental Policy, the Department of Mathematics, and the Business School.
Taken together, these findings confirm that Imperial's research is reaching policy audiences at scale and across a genuinely international landscape. They also raise questions worth sitting with: about the long lag between research and policy uptake, about the concentration of policy engagement within high-income countries, and about the extent to which current measures of research impact capture what is actually happening. Policy citation is a measure of documented engagement, not of influence or outcome.
This report is not simply a retrospective account of what Imperial's research has achieved. It is an attempt to map the research-to-policy pipeline with greater precision than is usually possible, and a test of whether the SDG framework, used carefully, can help institutions do that more systematically.
Date Issued
2026-09-28
Citation
Science for Humanity in Practice: Understanding the Policy Influence of Imperial’s SDG-Mapped Research, 2026, pp.1-38
Start Page
1
End Page
38
Journal / Book Title
Science for Humanity in Practice: Understanding the Policy Influence of Imperial’s SDG-Mapped Research
Copyright Statement
© 2026 The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
License URL
Subjects
Overton
Policy
SDG
Sustainable Development Goals
Publication Status
Published