Preparing for the application

Is Academic Research access right for you?

You qualify for Academic Research access and are encouraged to apply if you meet the following criteria:

• You are a graduate student, doctoral candidate, post-doc, faculty, or research-focused employee at an academic institution or university
• You have a clearly defined research objective, and you have specific plans for how you intend to use, analyze, and share Twitter data from your research. Jump down to project details we ask
• You will use this access for non-commercial purposes. More about non-commercial use

If you do not meet all of the requirements above, the broadest range of use cases and developers are served on the new Twitter API. This is ideal for commercial research, learning how to use the Twitter API, teaching, and building for fun or good causes. We will continue to introduce new offerings that serve the complete range of research use cases on the Twitter API v2.
 

Your academic profile

This section helps us verify your scholarly identity and association with an academic institution. Here, we ask for:

• Your full name as it is appears on your institution’s documentation
• Links to webpages that help establish your identity; provide one or more of the following:
  • A link to your profile in your institution’s faculty or student directory
  • A link to your Google Scholar profile
  • A link to your research group, lab or departmental website where you are listed
• Information about your academic institution: its name, country, state, and city
• Your department, school, or lab name
• Your academic field of study or discipline at this institution
• Your current role as an academic (whether you are a graduate student, doctoral candidate, post-doc, professor, research scientist, or other faculty member)
   

Your research project details

This section helps us understand how you intend to use the Twitter API and Twitter data. Your answers to these questions illustrate that you have a clearly defined academic research project in mind. This information is also used to ensure projects adhere to our Twitter Developer Agreement and Policy, including our terms for non-commercial use, and that we are protecting the safety and privacy of people on Twitter. Please be detailed, thoughtful, and thorough in your response to ensure reviewers are equipped to render a decision.

You can’t edit your responses to these questions later, so you’re encouraged to spend some extra time here. We ask:

• What is the name of your research project?
• Does this project receive funding from outside your academic institution? If yes, please list all your sources of funding.
• Don’t worry, your application will not be approved or denied based on your answer to this one question. This question helps us understand the scale of your project.
• In English, describe your research project. Minimum 200 characters.
• What is your project about? What is your primary research question, hypothesis, or objective? What do you hope to learn?
• In English, describe how Twitter data via the Twitter API will be used in your research project. Minimum 200 characters.
• In other words, how and why will you use Twitter data in this project? What purpose does Twitter data serve as a datasource for your project? While this question may seem very similar to the prior question, we want to understand the role Twitter data plays in your project specifically. For example, are you using this data to study Twitter itself as a subject, or are you using this data as a method (or one of many methods) to study a different topic?
• In English, describe your methodology for analyzing Twitter data, Tweets, and/or Twitter users. Minimum 200 characters.
• In other words, what types of analyses do you intend to perform with Twitter data? This should be more descriptive of your tactics than the question above.
• Will your research present Twitter data individually or in aggregate?
• Think of it as presenting individual Tweets or users vs. aggregate statistics or models.
• In English, describe how you will share the outcomes of your research (include tools, data, and/or other resources you hope to build and share). Minimum 200 characters.
• We would like to know how and where you are interested in publishing or sharing your results.
• Will your analysis make Twitter content or derived information available to a government entity?
• If yes, list all government entities you intend to provide Twitter content or derived information to under this use case. Note that your own academic institution does not apply in this question. Minimum 200 characters.
   

Next Steps

Once you have all of the above information, apply for Academic Research access. 

If a reviewer requires more information to render a decision, you may receive an email requesting additional details. For this reason, please make sure that you have added emails from @twitter.com and developer-accounts@twitter.com to your allow-list, so messages from us are not going to your spam folder.

Want to learn more about what is available to you first? Check out our Academic Research solution to explore the products, resources, and examples of research that can be done with Twitter data.