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Platform-controlled social media APIs threaten open science

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 2054–2057 (2023)Cite this article

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Social media data enable insights into human behaviour. Researchers can access these data via platform-provided application programming interfaces (APIs), but these come with restrictive usage terms that mean studies cannot be reproduced or replicated. Platform-owned APIs hinder access, transparency and scientific knowledge.

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Fig. 1: Accessing SM data.

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Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Darja Wischerath, Daniel Racek, Douglas A. Parry.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Brittany I. Davidson, Darja Wischerath, Emily Godwin, Joanne Hinds & Laura Ayravainen

  2. Department of Statistics, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Daniel Racek

  3. Department of Information Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Douglas A. Parry

  4. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

    Dirk van der Linden

  5. BT Applied Research, Ipswich, UK

    Jonathan F. Roscoe

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Alicia G. Cork

Authors
  1. Brittany I. Davidson
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  2. Darja Wischerath
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  4. Douglas A. Parry
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Contributions

B.I.D. conceptualized the work; B.I.D., D.W., D.R., J.H. and D.A.P. wrote the original draft; B.I.D., D.R., D.A.P., D.W., E.G., J.F.R., J.H., D.v.d.L., A.G.C. and L.A reviewed and edited all later versions of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brittany I. Davidson.

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Competing interests

This work was part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant ref: EP/W522090/1) as a PhD studentship to D.W. as an EPSRC iCASE with B.I.D. and J.F.R. This work also was part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant ref: EP/SO22465/1) as a PhD studentship to E.G. via the CDT in Cybersecurity TIPS-at-scale. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Cornelius Puschmann, Amelia Acker and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Davidson, B.I., Wischerath, D., Racek, D. et al. Platform-controlled social media APIs threaten open science. Nat Hum Behav 7, 2054–2057 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01750-2

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