The DOE Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) project will develop a version of the CESM targeted at efficiently using DOE leadership computing resources to address specific DOE science questions. During the development process, ACME will encourage mutually beneficial collaborations including maintaining the existing close collaboration with the CESM community. The ACME collaboration policy covers all persons with access to development code and simulation data, including members of ACME, other DOE programs and external collaborators. The policy is designed to ensure that proper credit for ACME as a whole and the contributions of all participants, including external collaborators.