Birds, Feathers and the Science-Policy Interface: Bibliometrics for Understanding UK Water Governance

Effective environmental governance depends on the translation of scientific research and expertise into action, yet we know surprisingly little about how policy (and policy-adjacent) actors consume and deploy scientific evidence. This study investigates the organisational and relational patterns that appear in evidence consumption within environmental policymaking, using UK freshwater governance as a case study. Through analysis of citation patterns in policy documents across UK government agencies and IGOs, we reveal systematic patterns in how policy actors access and use research-based expertise. Drawing from Overton, the world’s largest database of policy documents, we trace the uptake of freshwater research through citations in policy literature across UK government agencies, departments and international governmental organisations. Our analysis reveals several key patterns: publicly-funded research institutions are disproportionately influential relative to the wider evidence ecosystem; "methods" papers that propose frameworks and analytical tools dominate policy citations; and strong regional preferences exist, with organisations repeatedly citing familiar sources rather than accessing a broader evidence base. We observe reduced lag times between scholarly publication and policy citation following legislative changes, suggesting temporal and contextual relevance drives evidence uptake. However, citation practices show strong considerable path dependencies, with organisations referring to "preferred" papers used repeatedly over time. These findings challenge assumptions about evidence-based policymaking. Rather than a linear transmission of ‘best available evidence’, we demonstrate that relational proximity, institutional familiarity and organisational routines structure which knowledge enters the policy process. Our analysis illuminates how the organisation of knowledge production and use within government - specifically the role of publicly-funded research bodies as boundary organisations and knowledge brokers - fundamentally shapes the science-policy interface. These insights reveal who holds scientific influence in environmental policy, how evidence use becomes institutionalized in government, what conditions allow research to shape decisions - and how they might inform more realistic strategies for strengthening evidence uptake in contexts of environmental risk and uncertainty.