LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to allow them to be more productive and successful. From time to time, we may enable access to member data and content for research purposes either through supervised programs such as Economic Graph Research or for other projects conducted by independent researchers. In addition, we may be legally required to grant access to member data and content to third party researchers for research purposes authorized under law.


**(1) LinkedIn Granted Access to Independent Researchers:**


When granting access to member data to researchers, we seek to work with bona fide researchers who have no commercial interests in the use of the data and the outcome of their research. We also look to implement the following protections:


- We require researchers to demonstrate that their research has a goal of enabling economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and/or promoting the interests of society (e.g., online safety).

- We do not provide access to “private” data or content that may have been provided to LinkedIn (such as payment methods) or shared to a limited audience (such as private messages). In most cases, we will look to limit the data and content that we provide to researchers to public data (data our members choose to make widely available, such as a post to “Anyone”, public profile or comment to a post to “Anyone”). Even then, we may take additional steps to limit the personal data we provide (e.g., by removing direct identifiers such as names or links to actual member profiles associated with public content).

- We seek to only provide the data and content that is reasonably needed for a given research project.

- We require a commitment from researchers not to retain data and content any longer than is reasonably necessary and not to disclose the personal data of any individual members.

- We do not allow outside researchers to experiment or run tests on our members (e.g., engage with you directly on our platform to study your reaction).


**(2) Legally Required Independent Research Access**


Under some laws, we may be legally required to grant independent researchers access to member data and/or content. For example, the EU’s Digital Services Act Art. 40 includes a requirement to enable research to public data and content, and in some cases (after authorized by the appropriate EU regulator) “private” data and content.


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