Attack in South-East Turkey | Access to Analysis

With the bomb attack in Suruc in South-East Turkey, the focus is on the complex relationship that Turkey has with the Syrian civil war, and also with its own Kurdish population that is affected by the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. Here, too, Find Policy gives fast access to expertise. On the Foreign Policy search page, the right search terms bring diverse results.

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Toggling the date gives you the newest results. Additionally, the name of the town Suruc could have added current commentary.

Now you might be interested in experts on Kurdistan as well, potentially to reach out to them for interviews. Four US experts, there also is a dedicated search page. Type in "Kurdish" and you'll see some of the experts in leading US think tanks. (A similar search for UK experts – whose web biographies alas are less detailed – returns only one result.)

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To do your own search on foreign policy, go here, and on US experts right here.

#IranDeal – Getting the Best Think Tank Analysis

How do you get the newest and best research from think tanks? This is of particular interest when situations are evolving quickly, such as with the financial crisis in Greece, or yesterday's deal with Iran.

For these occasions, too, Find Policy can get your great results, quickly. Go to the search page focusing on leading Foreign Policy think tanks, and start your search. Two simple tricks will get you the best results.

First, add one current hotspot as a negative search term, by putting a minus-sign in front of it. So here we added -Greece, to make sure we don't just get the daily news roundup. Then, in the search results, toggle to sort by Date.

And thus you get great results. From the Wilson Center, from the Council for Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment, and so on. Even with Twitter, this is probably the single fastest way you can get quality research at a glance.

To try your own search, go to the Foreign Policy search page.

Following a Lead, Across Institutions

ProPublica, an investigative outfit in the United States, reports that a company producing tax-filing software has been active in trying to influence policy. The software company allegedly has used proxies to argue against a simpler system for filing taxes. Such a simplification would reduce the need for tax-filing software. It appears that the public relations firm working for the software maker had citizens reach out to lawmakers, with strikingly similar letters. Below is the story.

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If you are interested in policy, you may now well wonder whether any think tanks got involved. Here is where Find Policy comes in: type in the name of the software maker in the Public Policy search page, and you can see what think tanks tell us on this issue.

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A first glance suggests that think tanks across the spectrum were onto the issue. The New America Foundation highlighted corporate lobbying against simpler filing a few years ago, drawing on a local newspaper.

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Similarly, CATO and AEI highlighted the issue. 

It's a different political perspective, but they highlight that there are vested interests in keeping things complicated. As think tanks are becoming more transparent, it will be easier in the future to track contributions across think tanks in a single search as well. Faster and more focused, Find Policy makes it easy for you to see what the world's leading think tanks are up to. 

Go straight to the Public Policy search page here.

Find Policy Explained in a Video

A friend and colleague, Tigran Matosyan, put together a video explaining what Find Policy is about. 

Tigran put this together using a videoscribe service called Sparkol, which goes to show how much you can do with online tools nowadays. I love the simplicity, and how quick it is to explain things that way. So as we are updating the usability of Find Policy, we will develop more videos like that.

Tigran does extremely interesting research in Armenia, and you can find some of his work on Academia.edu. 

Click Any Tab Above for Immediate Access to Search

If you want immediate access to search, click any of the tabs above: Climate, Development, and so forth. There is also more specialized search under "More" with thematic search engines and search focusing on think tanks around the world, including Austrlia, Brazil, China, to just mention ABC. 

Why are you not landing on the blog, and not a particular search page when going to the homepage? Although Americans are about are the single largest group, they constitute less than a third of all users. 

While the Foreign Policy tab is currently most popular, many other search pages also draw traffic. Thus we keep the first page general, although this will mean another click for all users. Consider setting a bookmark. More about user numbers and geographic spread soon. 

Foreign Policy Crisis: Using Search

Current events in Ukraine draw much attention. Find Policy gives you a fast way of checking out what the main think tanks have to say. The more specific the search, the better the results. For example, if you try to understand the role of one of the opposition figures, Vitali Klitschko, you can see what a number of think tanks have to say about him. And as the search term is specific and events are unfolding fast, this is one of the cases where you may want to search by date first. 

Results from a variety of institutions, giving you the kind of detail that you may want to find quickly. Let us know if you have questions. You find the foreign policy engine above, or here: http://www.findpolicy.org/foreign-policy/