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Is there a way to obtain a dataset consisting of LinkedIn data? Is there any existing open dataset for this purpose? If no, can I collect the data using LinkedIn API?

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  • Do you want only the profile data, or other information as well? Your title and text differ. This is important given Joe's answer
    – user4293
    Jan 18, 2016 at 15:32

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While I'm not a representative of LinkedIn, nor am I a lawyer, this text from 1.4.4 of LinkedIn's API Terms of Use suggests not:

[to be eligible] your Application WILL NOT store or export any data from LinkedIn other than the LinkedIn Profile Data for the LinkedIn member that requested the data. “Profile Data” means the name, photo, headline, contact information, experience, education, summary, and location of a LinkedIn member. Profile Data excludes connections, network updates, job listings, groups, companies, and any other content.

This suggests that there is no open data set, or if there were, it would be violating LinkedIn's intended use for the data. Of course, it's not a definitive answer, but that is not uncommon for posts in the "data-request" tag.

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  • Joe, please note that this not answering the question
    – user4293
    Jan 18, 2016 at 15:33
  • fair enough. I added a sentence that tries to answer the question. As I've noted elsewhere on this SE, data-request questions often don't really support a decisive "no that doesn't exist" but when that's almost certainly the case, isn't it better to put something in as an answer than leave the thing dangling forever? Jan 18, 2016 at 18:09
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    Nothing wrong with your answer per se. Usually when an answer is not an answer I downvote it, but this had serious content.
    – user4293
    Jan 18, 2016 at 20:09
  • Please also note that LinkedIn has lost all court cases regarding their public data. A year ago they have even been ordered to allow massive scaled scraping (HIQ case) and work together with the other company if they run into issues. TOS is NOT the law, TOS is upon you to accept or not.
    – John
    Nov 16, 2017 at 18:54

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