CAS, Czech: Akademie věd České republiky, abbr.

AV ČR) was established in 1992 by the Czech National Council as the Czech successor of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and its tradition goes back to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences (founded in 1784) and the Emperor Franz Joseph Czech Academy for Sciences, Literature and Arts (founded in 1890).

The academy is the leading non-university public research institution in the Czech Republic.

The academy currently manages a network of sixty research institutes and five supporting units staffed by a total of 6,400 employees, over one half of whom are university-trained researchers and Ph.D. scientists.

The establishment of the academy in 1992 follows several previous organizations: In 2010 the academy adopted an open access policy to make its research outputs free to read and reuse.