Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Revealed: the ten research papers that policy documents cite most

An exclusive analysis shows that economics and interdisciplinary teams get the attention of policymakers.
  1. Dalmeet Singh Chawla

    1. Dalmeet Singh Chawla is a freelance science journalist based in London.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

When David Autor co-wrote a paper on how computerization affects job skill demands more than 20 years ago, a journal took 18 months to consider it — only to reject it after review. He went on to submit it to The Quarterly Journal of Economics, which eventually published the work1 in November 2003.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00660-1

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 22 April 2024: The original version of this story credited Sage, rather than Overton, as the source of the policy papers’ citation data. Sage’s location has also been updated.

References

  1. Autor, D. H., Levy, F. & Murnane, R. J. Q. J. Econ. 118, 1279–1333 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Costanza, R. et al. Nature 387, 253–260 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Willett, W. et al. Lancet 393, 447–492 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Steffen, W. et al. Science 347, 1259855 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Rockström, J. et al. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links