Policy Brief for the European Commission's Digital Services Act Delegated Act on Data Access consultation

1 ('Draft Act') by a group of researchers at Utrecht University and Maastricht University who conduct legal, computational, socio-legal, inter-and multidisciplinary research on the workings of online platforms.The Draft Act lays down the procedure and conditions for acquiring data access for researchers under article 40(8) Digital Services Act ('DSA') 2 , following an instruction for the Commission under article 40(13) DSA to specify the conditions under which researchers can apply for data access.This marks a potential watershed moment in research access to data of very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs). 3 Previously, researchers were dependent on public transparency reporting by companies, which were limited in scope and often had gaps or distorted displays of the reality of the workings of such platforms. 4 Similarly, they could 4