> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.antlect.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AcademicFellows Access

> How to access AcademicFellows freely through your own institutional identity, and why it matters

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."

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

<Note>
  If you have any issue connecting through your institutional ID via
  Tuakiri REANNZ, write to
  [support@academicfellows.com](mailto:support@academicfellows.com) and
  the team will talk through the options.
</Note>

## 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.

<Card title="Sign in to AcademicFellows" icon="arrow-up-right" href="https://academicfellows.com/access">
  Institutional sign-in, plus access routes for organisations without an
  academic affiliation.
</Card>