Help Center
YouTube Research API
This article describes the steps to obtain a YouTube API key and upgrade it for research.
Following this guide will result in two outputs: a project ID, and an API key.
If you have completed all steps and lost any of that information, you can access it at your Google API dashboard.
Create a Project and API key
Using your UALR gmail account, follow the steps here to create a project. Make a note of your project ID and share it along with your API key.
- Obtain authorization credentials so your application can submit API requests.
- After creating your project, make sure the YouTube Data API is one of the services that your application is registered to use:
- Go to the API Console and select the project that you just registered.
- Visit the Enabled APIs page. In the list of APIs, make sure the status is ON for the YouTube Data API v3.
Upgrade to a Research API key
If you are conducting YouTube research and need a quota extension, with API key and project ID in hand, visit this form to apply for a Research upgrade.
Your full legal name
Your Name
Organization contact email address
Your ualr email address
Country
United States of America
Organization Name
University of Arkansas
Organization Website
cosmos.ualr.edu
Organization Address
UA Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock, AR 72204-1099
Job Type
Phd Student
or
Other – Graduate Research Assistant
Department Name
College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Link to your profile in your institution’s faculty or researcher directory
Your cosmos profile
Project title
The project title can include keywords encompassing the use of YouTube for social media studies, adding the particular flavor of your research project.
Research Start date
Today’s date
Research End date
Your graduation date
Proposal
Describe your research project in more details here. I share below some content for inspiration but make sure to paraphrase anything you borrow. We do not want to have our requests automatically flagged if multiple people from the same center submit near-identical requests.
You can mention research goals, publication goals, how this helps YouTube (maintain a safe and informative environment, combating bad actors on the platform, recognizing bots, hostile information operations, reduce the harm of the rabbit hole effect, reduce online radicalization and increase public knowledge, etc.).
Also describe your method and the data used, probably metadata and engagement metrics as shared through the official API. You can mention the production of anonymized time series statistics, network graphs, natural language processing maps, and other aggregated analytics. You can also mention that this research is a living, ongoing project which may span several years and provide valuable information to populate datasets for researchers across the organization.
Field of Research
Computer and Information Science
Is your research affiliated or sponsored by government or non-government entity
No
Please list all the project numbers used for each of your API Client(s)
The project ID you created earlier
Is this a publicly or privately available API Client?
Internal use only
If there is a log-in required to access the API client, please provide a demo account and instructions on how to access the API Client
N/A
Does your API Client commercialize YouTube Data?
No
Choose the option that best resembles your API Client’s use case
Research
Does your API Client use multiple projects to access YouTube APIs?
No
Does this API Client display data from, or provide features or services across, multiple platforms (ex: Facebook, Twitter, etc.)?
No
How long do you store YouTube API Data?
12 months
How often do you refresh YouTube API Data?
1 week
Send documents (e.g., design documents, etc.) relating to your implementation, access, integration and use of YouTube API Services by each of your API Client/If the API Client is not accessible publicly, please upload a detailed screencast of each YouTube API Service functionality and YouTube data, content and information as displayed on, or integrated into, this API Client.
Share documents, paper, screencast, etc. describing your research as is appropriate.
Note on Projects and API keys
The form above has an ambiguous field asking for other project IDs. This is likely asking for commercial products leveraging multiple API layers to accomplish the same goals or coming together for whatever reason. This could be interpreted as Google asking for every API key collected through the method described in this page, as they will all go towards crawling data. We made the decision to only fill in individual projects as it does not seem like Google is asking for this kind of parallel data collection. This would imply that each student would need to share each project ID as they are created by others, rendering the task overly complex. Furthermore, if that was the case, a more elegant solution would have been to create one project aggregating all keys and sharing the same function. However, projects share API quotas, mooting the point.