Critical Perspectives on Data Access for Research provides a rich and interdisciplinary critique on regulation that opens the 'black box' of technology companies to researchers. It brings together scholars from across the globe, working in varied fields including critical legal studies, science and technology studies, critical data studies and digital humanities. The book explores questions of data access – to acquire and use data meaningfully as well as resist power. It covers a variety of themes, including the opportunities and challenges of the law as a tool for observing digital infrastructures, political economy of data access for research and the power dynamics between academia, private/public sector, and civil society. In doing so, the book also examines these questions in terms of the politics of knowledge production, discussing if there is a privileging of geographical and institutional contexts in data access regimes.This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.