The performance evaluations of universities and academics are undergoing unprecedented expansion. Excellence in academiamight not naturally translate into societal impact; alternative assessment instruments have been developed in recent years, aimed at extending conceptions of academic excellence. New metric techniques like altmetrics play a key role in capturing non-academic engagement of research in a broad range of sources, meant as a complement to traditional indicators. Just as citations are seen as indicative of a degree of academic recognition, references to scientific publications in non-scholarly sources are seen as indicative of a certain societal recognition they enjoy. However, their partial reliance on social media like Twitter makes them prone to manipulationslike academic spamming . References to scientific publications cited in policy documents seem a promising avenue for application in research evaluation, as these are presumably more likely to signal a direct SIUR and seem less prone to questionable practices. Novel databases like Overtonallow for detailed analysis of research uptake in more than six million policy-related documents from countries worldwide. But because the ability to measure and analyze citations to academic works in policy documents has only recently become a technical possibility, questions remain as to which and whose research appears in those documents. More research is needed that focuses on unexpected biases these objects might generate; moreover, gender and seniority of researchers appearing in Overton have not been thoroughly investigated.