AcademicFellows Access

Trust and identity are central to research collaboration, and so is seamless integration with the access systems institutions already run. AcademicFellows uses that same identity. There is no second account to create, no separate password to remember, and no approval queue to sit in. AcademicFellows is a service provider under REANNZ’s federated identity system. Here is how REANNZ explains this service and why it matters for research: “Tuakiri allows an end-user to consume services, access resources, and otherwise collaborate within New Zealand while using their home institution’s identity. This means that the end-user does not require a unique identity with every remote organisation they are working with, simplifying the workflow of both the end-user, and the IT staff as the service being accessed gets trusted identity that has been verified by the home organisation.”

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Sign in where you already do

When you click Sign in, you will be asked to choose your institution. This takes you to your institution’s own login page for authentication, where you consent to sharing your name, email address, and institution. Your password credentials never reach AcademicFellows at all, and that is the whole point: it is what makes the system secure and trusted.

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Why built on REANNZ’s federated identity system

Under Antlect, AcademicFellows is a research collaboration platform, and access is managed as a service provider under REANNZ, the organisation that runs the identity infrastructure connecting universities, Crown Research Institutes, and research organisations across the country. It is the same infrastructure those institutions rely on to protect their own systems, and AcademicFellows sits inside that same circle of trust rather than beside it. Your affiliation on AcademicFellows is not something you typed into a form, and it is not something we assign. It was asserted by your own primary institution, and AcademicFellows grants access on that basis.

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Why it matters

• No one can claim to be you. An identity can only be maintained by the identity provider, which is your primary institution, so impersonation has no route in.
• No fake or automated accounts sit alongside real ones. There is no open signup for them to come from.
• Your standing here stays accurate. When someone’s institutional relationship ends, so does their access, without AcademicFellows having to track it separately.

Reliable identity is what makes a research network worth trusting in the first place, and REANNZ’s infrastructure is what makes that possible here without asking you to do anything extra. It is the gold standard for accessing research infrastructure.

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Who can use it

Anyone with access to a participating New Zealand university, Crown Research Institute, or research organisation:

• Academic staff and faculty
• PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers
• Research fellows and scientists
• Alumni and researchers who retain institutional credentials

Access is free for individual researchers.

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What happens on first sign-in

You will be asked to consent to sharing your name, email address, and institution. Your public research profile is then created from your public research record on Antlect’s data foundation: the concepts you work on, your affiliations, collaborations, and outputs become part of your profile. Nothing is published that was not already in the public domain.

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Coverage

AcademicFellows is a service provider under REANNZ’s Tuakiri, and it currently supports New Zealand institutions. We are working to extend access to the Australian research ecosystem.