University of Aberdeen

AURA DSpace REST API (tenancy on Edinburgh IS infrastructure)

The Aberdeen University Research Archive (AURA) runs DSpace 8.1-SNAPSHOT and exposes a public HATEOAS REST API advertising 79 endpoint families — communities, collections, items, bitstreams, discovery/search, statistics, configuration, versioning, workflow and the COAR Notify submission endpoints. Retrieved live 2026-09-01: the API root returns 200 in 0.37s with dspaceName "Aura" and 182 communities. The content, the metadata and the administration are Aberdeen's (adminEmail aura-manager@abdn.ac.uk), but the hosting is not: aura.abdn.ac.uk CNAMEs to aura.abdn-lb.is.ed.ac.uk and resolves to 129.215.5.66, University of Edinburgh address space, "abdn-lb" being an Aberdeen load balancer inside Edinburgh Information Services. The contract is DSpace's, the deployment is Edinburgh's, the data is Aberdeen's. Recorded as a tenant relationship; no DSpace specification is held under this slug. Note the Angular user interface at aura.abdn.ac.uk/ and /home was returning 503 and 502 proxy errors on 2026-09-01 while the REST and OAI backends answered in under half a second — the machine surface is healthier than the human one.

GitHub

Documentation

📖
Documentation
https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/server/api

Other Resources

🔗
ResearchRepository
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/open-research/
🔗
Conformance
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-aberdeen/refs/heads/main/conformance/university-of-aberdeen-conformance.yml

Work with this as data

Every API here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for apis

7 MCP tools reach this
  • find_apisBrowse and filter every API in the catalog.
  • get_api_artifactsOne API's artifacts, grouped by type.
  • get_openapiThe primary OpenAPI for this API.
  • find_similar_apisAPIs that look like this one.
  • apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
  • resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
  • find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.
All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page
This API 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/apis/aura-dspace-rest"
All apis 
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/apis?limit=25"

Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.

API entry from apis.yml

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: university-of-aberdeen:aura-dspace-rest
name: AURA DSpace REST API (tenancy on Edinburgh IS infrastructure)
description: 'The Aberdeen University Research Archive (AURA) runs DSpace 8.1-SNAPSHOT and exposes a public
  HATEOAS REST API advertising 79 endpoint families — communities, collections, items, bitstreams, discovery/search,
  statistics, configuration, versioning, workflow and the COAR Notify submission endpoints. Retrieved
  live 2026-09-01: the API root returns 200 in 0.37s with dspaceName "Aura" and 182 communities. The content,
  the metadata and the administration are Aberdeen''s (adminEmail aura-manager@abdn.ac.uk), but the hosting
  is not: aura.abdn.ac.uk CNAMEs to aura.abdn-lb.is.ed.ac.uk and resolves to 129.215.5.66, University
  of Edinburgh address space, "abdn-lb" being an Aberdeen load balancer inside Edinburgh Information Services.
  The contract is DSpace''s, the deployment is Edinburgh''s, the data is Aberdeen''s. Recorded as a tenant
  relationship; no DSpace specification is held under this slug. Note the Angular user interface at aura.abdn.ac.uk/
  and /home was returning 503 and 502 proxy errors on 2026-09-01 while the REST and OAI backends answered
  in under half a second — the machine surface is healthier than the human one.'
humanURL: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/open-research/
baseURL: https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/server/api
tags:
- Research
- Open Access
- Institutional Repository
- DSpace
- REST
- Tenant
properties:
- type: Documentation
  url: https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/server/api
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/open-research/
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/university-of-aberdeen-conformance.yml
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-basis: 'DNS: aura.abdn.ac.uk CNAME aura.abdn-lb.is.ed.ac.uk, A 129.215.5.66 (University of
  Edinburgh). The hostname is on Aberdeen''s own registrable domain, so a host-name verdict reads this
  as institution-operated; the CNAME shows it is not. Software self-declaration: dspaceVersion "DSpace
  8.1-SNAPSHOT".'
x-vendor: DSpace (LYRASIS), deployed by University of Edinburgh Information Services
x-probe:
  baseURL_status: 200
  ui_root_status: 503
  ui_home_status: 502
  availability: intermittent
  note: Repeated back-to-back probing on 2026-09-01 returned 200 in ~0.36s on four of six attempts and
    degraded on the other two — one 503 after 31s and one connection timeout after 40s. The endpoint is
    live and functional but not reliably so; graded live-with-intermittent-degradation, not dead.
  probed: '2026-09-01'