Engineering Department Collaborator Accounts
Cambridge University Engineering Department IT facilities are available to people who are current members of staff or students or who are official academic visitors to the Department. Provided certain conditions are met, others, external to the Department, involved in academic collaboration, may be given access to Departmental IT facilities and if necessary Cambridge University IT facilities. Collaborator accounts can only be provided for specified academic purposes. Private and commercial work is not permitted.
Collaborator accounts are provided for remote collaboration only. If on-site collaboration is required a visitor account must be requested.
Who qualifies as an academic collaborator?
In general an academic collaborator is someone who is not officially part of the Department, but who is working with members of the Department on projects of academic value. Academic collaborators do not work in the Department, but need remote access to Departmental and University computing facilities to facilitate their collaboration.
All applications for access to IT facilities as an academic collaborator must be sponsored by a member of established staff (normally a member of teaching staff or senior administrative staff) and supported by the Head of the relevant Academic Division, or a Deputy Head / Head of Department.
There must be strong academic benefits for collaborative research to be considered. The Head of Division must be convinced of these benefits in order to approve an application and will refuse requests where:
- The account is not absolutely necessary for collaboration but exists only to enable someone to appear to be from Cambridge (e.g by having a Cambridge e-mail address).
- If the sole aim is to maintain an email address related to past published papers, then staff/students should publish with their abc123@cam.ac.uk email address and, before departure, set a suitable message using the autoreply service (https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/accounts-passwords/leaving) stating that they have left and providing their new contact details. An alternative option would also be to utilise an ORCID ID, please see here for further information.
- It enables people to benefit from Departmental & University resources at the risk of breaching the terms of software licences and research grant contracts
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- Collaborator access to licenced software, will breach contractual terms associated with this resource unless an appropriate agreement is in place with the relevant supplier (staff in ICS must be consulted concerning software licence terms and conditions).
- Collaborator access to research data, models and outputs, where research grants are governed by confidentiality and intellectual property terms, are at risk of breaching contractual terms and conditions. The Research Operations Office must be consulted where research data access is requested.
- Collaborator status is being organised automatically for those members who have been visitors, students or staff without checking whether it is required or appropriate.
- If the sole aim is to share files with an external party then this should be done through the use of alternative resources such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Moodle.
Collaborators needing to be on site at the Engineering Department can do so on an occasional basis. They must attend site as a day visitor, signing in/out daily with our reception team. They must be accompanied at all times whilst in the Department. For insurance and health and safety reasons it is essential that anyone visiting the Department for more than two weeks consecutively or wishing to work on-site unaccompanied must contact the Research Office in advance to arrange becoming an academic visitor.
Applying to become a collaborator
The collaborator account online application may be completed by either the intended collaborator, their sponsor or the appropriate administrator.
*The person submitting the collaborator account request must have an active Engineering Department account in order to be able to complete the form.
Please ensure all form fields are completed where possible:
- A non-Cambridge email address must be included.
- The application must include full details of proposed collaborative research, and the IT resources to which access will be required. An application requesting only email must be fully justified, including why use of a non-Cambridge email address is not possible.
- Collaborator account requests will be returned to the requestor if insufficient information is provided.
- The academic sponsor must be a current member of academic staff at Engineering.
- A collaborator account end date must be included (do not exceed 12 months).
- On completion of the collaborator application please ensure you select 'submit application' at the bottom of the page.
For information relating to additional University IT services please see the link for additional information https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/new-starters/academic-staff
Please note that if it is determined that a collaborator account is not appropriate the account request will be rejected. The collaborator and sponsor will both be notified.
The collaborator request process is time consuming, early submission of a collaborator account request is recommended. Please note; where a collaborator application is for a member of the Department who is due to leave, the application should be submitted before their current end date. If this is not done their accounts will be at risk of closure. It is suggested that Heads of Division utilise their Divisional Administrators to manage the collaborator process internally. The IT Helpdesk will inform collaborators when their collaborator accounts have been set up/extended.
The collaborator account online application form can be found at the link below and in the right hand panel of this page: https://collaborator.eng.cam.ac.uk/
Collaborator account restrictions
Most licensed software and all licensed e-resources (e-journals and databases) are only available to current staff and students of the University. Collaborators must not attempt to access facilities they are not entitled to use.
Renewal of collaborator accounts
Collaborator accounts are allocated for a maximum period of one year. If the collaboration continues beyond this the account will need to be re-applied for, following the same process as for a new collaboration. The requirements will be reviewed in context each time and a continuing account with the same criteria may be refused despite having been successful in the past.
The new application should be submitted prior to the expiry of the current collaboration by completing a new online application at the link below:
Closure of collaborator accounts
Any collaborator account which is found to be being used for purposes other than the authorised collaboration may be closed without warning.
In particular actions which bring the University into disrepute or infringe on legal or contractual responsibilities will not be tolerated.
Collaborators will normally be sent an email warning approximately a month before their account is due to be closed: if the collaborator believes there is still outstanding work they should contact the sponsoring member of staff to arrange a renewal.
