Web scraping for research: Legal, ethical, institutional, and scientific considerations
Megan A. Brown, Andrew Gruen, Gabe Maldoff, Solomon Messing, Zeve Sanderson, Michael Zimmer
Abstract
Scientists across disciplines often use data from the internet to conduct research, generating valuable insights about human behavior. However, as generative artificial intelligence relying on massive text corpora becomes increasingly valuable, platforms have greatly restricted access to data through official channels. As a result, researchers will likely engage in more web scraping to collect data, introducing new challenges and concerns for researchers. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for web scraping in social science research for U.S.-based researchers, examining the legal, ethical, institutional, and scientific factors that we recommend researchers consider when scraping the web. We present an overview of the current regulatory environment impacting when and how researchers can access, collect, store, and share data via scraping. We then provide researchers with recommendations to conduct scraping in a scientifically legitimate and ethical manner. We aim to equip researchers with the relevant information to mitigate risks and maximize the impact of their research amid this evolving data access landscape.