Meaningful research and innovation increasingly depend on the continuous availability of data collected on digital platforms. As recently observed by Nature magazine, a new breed of ‘computational social scientists are exploring massive and unruly data sets, extracting meaning from society’s digital imprint’. Examples include the use of social media data to detect early signs of pending natural disasters or infectious disease outbreaks, or the increasing use of social networks’ data in digital health research. Access to platform data is also necessary to oversee platform governance and hold digital platforms accountable for the ways they manage and shape human behaviour. Platforms, though, do not share their data easily, not even for the purpose of public interest research – research conducted for the benefit of society as a whole. Various economic, legal, regulatory and reputational incentives support data lockage by platforms. Data control allows platforms to protect their proprietary interests in the data they collect and analyse and maintain their competitive advantage in the data economy; it may reduce privacy and data protection risks involved in sharing data with third parties; and it may reduce discarded criticism over the controversial ways in which digital platforms control our lives. Therefore, platforms typically restrict data access by deploying technological barriers and applying legal restrictions in their boilerplate contracts. Recent events have demonstrated the various barriers researchers are facing when seeking to access data on digital platforms. In 2021, Facebook deactivated the accounts of team members of NYU's Cybersecurity for Democracy Project, and threatened legal action against them, for accessing users' data in violation of Facebook's terms of service (ToS). The NYU research team was studying misinformation in political ads on Facebook. To collect the necessary data, the researchers asked users to install an Ad Observer browser extension, which allowed the sharing of data with the NYU research team, specifically data about the political ads which were displayed to users on Facebook. The same happened with an AlgorithmWatch project on Instagram's newsfeed algorithm, which also relied on data provided by volunteers who agreed to install a browser add-on that removed their Instagram newsfeed. Some digital platforms offer services such as Meta’s CrowdTangle, which does not even offer API access to download data in real time and in bulk. Platforms may also end such services at any time at their sole discretion, or introduce prohibitively high charges for using their data pipeline. Against this background, the need to legally support non-commercial, public benefit research, using platform data, is becoming even clearer. The new EU legal framework for digital and data governance, the EU Digital Strategy, seeks to secure better access to platform data for research purposes, by turning decisions about data sharing into a public issue, subject to regulatory discretion and following objective standards. Through different regulations - most importantly the Digital Services Act (DSA) – the Digital Strategy provides for a mandatory data-sharing regime and transparency obligations, introduces mechanisms for data reuse and research collaborations, and facilitates the establishment of designated data spaces. Although the new strategy is an important milestone in the effort to improve access to data for research purposes, it fails to provide a comprehensive legal basis for a right to research platform data. As our analysis demonstrates, the new regulation focuses on enhancing platform accountability and oversight. While this is obviously an important step, it overlooks the importance of platform data access to the future of academic and scientific research per se. Platforms may still exclude such non-commercial research, notwithstanding its critical role in promoting science and technology for the benefit of society as a whole. This paper examines the right to research platform data under the new Digital Strategy, particularly the DSA. It analyzes its potential to facilitate access to data for research purposes, and identifies the gaps it leaves unattended and the new critical barriers it introduces for platform data research. The paper then proposes how to address these limitations. It argues that a comprehensive right to research platform data cannot be fully supported without a safe harbor for researchers. In appropriate circumstances, such legal immunity should shield researchers from legal claims that platforms may assert against them for engaging in data access that is not strictly covered by the new Digital Strategy. This paper proceeds as follows: First, we discuss the fundamental right to research and the critical role of access to platform data for performing public interest research in the digital era. We then describe how the DSA facilitates access to platform data for research purposes, and analyse the barriers researchers face within the new legal framework. Finally, we suggest how to overcome these barriers, followed by concluding remarks
