The web is fraught with contradiction. On the one hand, the web has become a central means of information in everyday life and therefore holds the primary sources of our history created by a large variety of people (Milligan, 2016; Winters, 2017). Yet, much less importance is attached to its preservation, meaning that potentially interesting sources for future (humanities) research are lost. Web archiving therefore is a direct result of the computational turn and has a role to play in knowledge production and dissemination as demonstrated by a number of publications (e.g. Brügger & Schroeder, 2017) and research initiatives related to the research use of web archives (e.g. https://resaw.eu/). However, conducting research, and answering research questions based on web archives - in short; ‘using web archives as a data resource for digital scholars’ (Vlassenroot et al., 2019) - demonstrates that this so-called ‘computational turn’ in humanities and social sciences (i.e. the increased incorporation of advanced computational research methods and large datasets into disciplines which have traditionally dealt with considerably more limited collections of evidence), indeed requires new skills and new software. In December 2016, a pilot web-archiving project called PROMISE (PReserving Online Multiple Information: towards a Belgian StratEgy) was funded. The aim of the project was to (i) identify current best practices in web-archiving and apply them to the Belgian context, (ii) pilot Belgian web-archiving, (iii) pilot access (and use) of the pilot Belgian web archive for scientific research, and (iv) make recommendations for a sustainable web-archiving service for Belgium. Now the project is moving towards its final stages, the project team is focusing on the third objective of the project, namely how pilot access to the Belgian web archive for scientific research. The aim of this presentation is to discuss how the PROMISE team approached piloting access to the Belgian web-archive for scientific research, including: ...