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| Oxylabs Launches Project 4β to Revolutionize Non-Profit and Academic Research with Pro Bono Web Scraping Technology Image credit: oxylabs website |
Oxylabs, a leading web intelligence platform, has launched "Project 4β," a pro bono initiative to demonstrate the transformative power of web scraping technology for advancing research and non-profit efforts. This initiative supports various academic and non-profit organizations by enabling efficient data collection and analysis.
Nadezhda Barodzich, CEO at #SRNT Project, emphasized the impact of this technology on their operations. She noted that manually collecting information about hundreds of organizations was previously a lengthy and complex process, especially for their small non-profit with limited resources. The access to advanced web scraping solutions pro bono has revolutionized their data collection process, allowing them to efficiently compile and maintain a vast database of NGOs. This database, which they plan to make widely available, helps those in need find assistance, even in unusual situations.
In the academic sector, web scraping has become an essential tool for researchers. Carson Phillips, a Doctoral Candidate at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, uses web scraping to study the societal impacts of technological developments. His research relies on publicly available online information to document changes across various social contexts. Phillips explained that meaningful research on the effects of technology would be significantly limited without web scraping technologies. Companies often design their websites in ways that complicate or prevent the collection of publicly available information. Free access to third-party web data collection tools and expertise has enabled him to overcome these challenges and conduct research at scale. Web scraping allows him to identify key differences in search result quality based on geographic location, highlighting how real-world inequalities are reflected in the digital realm.
Linh Vi, a lecturer in Economics at Aston University, also leverages web scraping to gather data for various economic analyses, such as studying online job vacancies, price-setting, house prices, and online donations. One significant finding from her research was the identification of gender and physical appearance biases in emerging countries, which have important policy implications for addressing labor market biases. Vi faces challenges like CAPTCHAs, blocked IPs, and dynamic web designs but stated that without web scraping technology, their ability to conduct research would be significantly hindered. Manual data collection or surveys are time-consuming and less efficient, making web scraping essential for scale, speed, and timeliness.
Oxylabs' "Project 4β" highlights the significant benefits of web scraping technology, providing crucial support to academic and non-profit sectors to facilitate impactful research and societal advancements.
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