Policy Brief as Research Output

Policy brief

A short document — typically 2-8 pages — synthesising research evidence for a policy-maker audience, with explicit policy implications or recommendations, structured for accessibility rather than for academic readers, and issued by research institutions, NGOs, or government-aligned bodies.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 22 Aug 2026

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A policy brief is a short document — typically 2 to 8 pages, occasionally up to around 8 for a more technical policy audience — that synthesises research evidence for a policy-maker audience, with explicit policy implications or recommendations, structured for accessibility rather than for an academic readership. Policy briefs are issued by research institutions, think tanks, NGOs, and government-aligned bodies, and converge on a broadly common structure: a title and one-line takeaway, an executive summary or key messages, context, evidence and findings, implications and recommendations, and sources.

How it fits alongside peer-reviewed publication types

A policy brief is not itself peer-reviewed in the way a journal article is, and it is not the same output as a peer-reviewed article that happens to discuss policy implications — the defining feature is the format and audience (short, recommendation-oriented, written for policy-makers) rather than the underlying research being new. Policy briefs are, however, increasingly counted as legitimate research outputs in narrative CVs and research-impact case studies — for example, the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact assessment scores such dissemination on reach and significance, and specifically requires concrete corroborating evidence that a benefit or change actually occurred, not just that the brief was published.

Example

A short policy brief published by a research institute, synthesising several of the institute’s own underlying research papers into a set of concrete, accessible recommendations for policy-makers.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Policy brief"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/policy-brief" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/policy-brief",
  "name": "Policy brief",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/policy-brief",
  "description": "A short document — typically 2-8 pages — synthesising research evidence for a policy-maker audience, with explicit policy implications or recommendations, structured for accessibility rather than for academic readers, and issued by research institutions, NGOs, or government-aligned bodies.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/policy-brief",
  "sameAs": [
    "Policy memo",
    "Research brief"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:29:45",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}