Nordic research in the policy sphere: insights into policy citations

We investigated citation patterns of Nordic research in policy documents and factors associated with policy-cited publications across six OECD Fields of Research and Development disciplines. We analyzed 301,038 policy-cited, Scopus-indexed articles and reviews that researchers at institutions in five Nordic countries authored over 15 years (2010–2024). We assessed the types of policy bodies and how access type, journal impact metrics like Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), journal quartile, and sector collaboration were associated with policy citation. Think tanks were the most common policy-body type across disciplines, while government organizations produced the most policy citations; intergovernmental organizations contributed modestly, and other policy body types remained marginal. Citations to open access (OA) publications surpassed those to non-OA publications between 2016 and 2018, peaked in 2020 and 2021, and accompanied a steady decline in non-OA citations. Across policy body types and disciplines, publications in journals with SNIP ≥ 1 received more policy citations than those in journals with SNIP < 1. Publications with SNIP ≥ 1 appeared mainly in Q1 journals, whereas those with SNIP < 1 concentrated on Q2 journals. OA and non-OA publications showed similar quartile distributions within each SNIP threshold. Academic-only collaboration predominated across most disciplines. Academic-government collaboration was strongest in Agricultural Sciences and Natural Sciences, while academic-corporate collaboration was more common in Engineering & Technologies and Medical Sciences. These findings demonstrated that policy-cited Nordic research concentrated on high-impact Q1 journals, increasingly appeared as OA, and mainly resulted from academic-only collaborations. These patterns helped explain and potentially strengthen Nordic research visibility at the science–policy interface.