University of Oxford Repository API

openapi: 3.2.0
info:
  title: ORA — Oxford University Research Archive Search Repository API
  version: '2026-08-19'
  summary: JSON:API-shaped search and record retrieval over Oxford's institutional open-access repository.
  description: 'A derived description of the JSON responses that the Oxford University Research Archive

    (ORA) returns from its public object endpoints. ORA is operated by the Bodleian Libraries,

    University of Oxford, on the University''s own infrastructure — the OAI-PMH Identify

    response for the same service echoes the origin host

    `ora4-rhel9-prd-public2.bodleian.ox.ac.uk` and the admin contact

    `ora-dev@bodleian.ox.ac.uk`. The application is a Blacklight/Solr front end that Oxford

    develops in-house (its own source is referenced at gitlab.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ORA4).


    IMPORTANT PROVENANCE NOTE: Oxford does not publish this contract. Oxford documents the

    OAI-PMH interface at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/api and says nothing about the JSON endpoints.

    This document was DERIVED by API Evangelist from live, unauthenticated responses captured

    on 2026-08-19 and stored verbatim in ../examples/. It describes behaviour that was

    observed, not behaviour Oxford has committed to. Treat it as an undocumented surface that

    may change without notice, and read ORA''s harvesting etiquette at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/api

    before automating against it — the operator asks large-scale harvesters to make contact

    first and reserves the right to block unexpected scraping.

    '
  contact:
    name: ORA — Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
    email: ora-dev@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
    url: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/api
  termsOfService: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/terms_of_use
  license:
    name: Metadata available under CC0 1.0 via the rioxx_terms_cc0 OAI-PMH format
    url: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: ora.ox.ac.uk is a University of Oxford registrable domain; the OAI-PMH Identify response for the same service names ora4-rhel9-prd-public2.bodleian.ox.ac.uk as the origin and ora-dev@bodleian.ox.ac.uk as the administrator.
  x-provenance:
    generated: '2026-08-19'
    method: derived
    source: Derived from live unauthenticated GET responses to https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects.json and https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/{id}.json captured 2026-08-19; payloads stored in ../examples/university-of-oxford-ora-search-response.json and ../examples/university-of-oxford-ora-object-response.json.
servers:
- url: https://ora.ox.ac.uk
  description: ORA public production (fronted by Cloudflare; some paths are bot-challenged)
tags:
- name: Repository
  description: Search and retrieval of ORA repository records.
paths:
  /objects.json:
    get:
      operationId: searchObjects
      summary: Search ORA repository records
      description: Returns a paged, faceted result set of ORA records. The response also carries the service's own vocabulary — the supported search_field values, sort orders and facet fields — under `included`, which makes the endpoint self-describing.
      tags:
      - Repository
      parameters:
      - name: q
        in: query
        description: Free-text query.
        required: false
        schema:
          type: string
        example: climate
      - name: search_field
        in: query
        description: Field the query is applied to. Observed values come from the service's own `included[type=search_field]` entries.
        required: false
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - all_fields
          - title
          - author
          - keyword
          default: all_fields
      - name: sort
        in: query
        description: Sort order, taken from the service's own `included[type=sort]` entries.
        required: false
        schema:
          type: string
          enum:
          - score desc
          - record_publication_date desc
          - record_publication_date asc
          - computed__contains_full_text desc
          default: score desc
      - name: page
        in: query
        description: 1-indexed page number.
        required: false
        schema:
          type: integer
          minimum: 1
          default: 1
      - name: per_page
        in: query
        description: Page size. The observed default is 10; the operator has not documented a maximum, so callers should not assume one.
        required: false
        schema:
          type: integer
          minimum: 1
          default: 10
      - name: f
        in: query
        description: Facet filter, sent Rails-style as `f[<facet_id>][]=<value>` — for example `f[f_type_of_work][]=Thesis`. Facet ids are listed in the response's `included[type=facet]` entries.
        required: false
        style: deepObject
        explode: true
        schema:
          type: object
          additionalProperties:
            type: array
            items:
              type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: A page of matching records with facets and the service vocabulary.
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchResponse'
              examples:
                climate:
                  summary: Probed response, trimmed to 3 records
                  externalValue: ../examples/university-of-oxford-ora-search-response.json
        '403':
          description: Cloudflare managed challenge. Observed on other ORA paths (for example /objects/opensearch.xml) for non-browser clients. The service is live; the request was mitigated, not refused by the application.
          content:
            text/html:
              schema:
                type: string
        '429':
          description: Not observed, but ORA's published etiquette states that unexpected spidering or scraping may lead to access being blocked. Documented here so clients back off.
  /objects/{objectId}.json:
    get:
      operationId: getObject
      summary: Retrieve one ORA record
      description: Returns the full metadata document for a single ORA record. Every attribute is wrapped in a `document_value` envelope carrying a human `label` alongside the `value` array.
      tags:
      - Repository
      parameters:
      - name: objectId
        in: path
        required: true
        description: ORA record identifier, in the form `uuid:<uuid>`.
        schema:
          type: string
          pattern: ^uuid:[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}$
        example: uuid:ffe1394e-cfea-4e55-a561-2b707325fd1b
      responses:
        '200':
          description: The record.
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/ObjectResponse'
              examples:
                record:
                  externalValue: ../examples/university-of-oxford-ora-object-response.json
        '404':
          description: No such record. Observed as an HTML error page rather than a JSON error body — the service has no machine-readable error format.
          content:
            text/html:
              schema:
                type: string
components:
  schemas:
    Pages:
      type: object
      properties:
        current_page:
          type: integer
        next_page:
          type:
          - integer
          - 'null'
        prev_page:
          type:
          - integer
          - 'null'
        total_pages:
          type: integer
        limit_value:
          type: integer
        offset_value:
          type: integer
        total_count:
          type: integer
        first_page?:
          type: boolean
        last_page?:
          type: boolean
    Included:
      type: object
      description: Self-describing vocabulary the service returns alongside results — facets, the available search fields and the available sort orders.
      properties:
        type:
          type: string
          enum:
          - facet
          - search_field
          - sort
        id:
          type: string
        attributes:
          type: object
          properties:
            label:
              type: string
            items:
              type: array
              items:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/FacetItem'
        links:
          type: object
          properties:
            self:
              type: string
              format: uri
    Record:
      type: object
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
          description: ORA record identifier, `uuid:<uuid>`.
        type:
          description: Present on every observed record and null on every observed record. Recorded as observed; do not depend on it.
          type:
          - string
          - 'null'
        attributes:
          type: object
          description: Metadata attributes. `title` is a plain string; every other observed attribute is a DocumentValue. The attribute set varies by record — search results carry a reduced set, the single-record endpoint the full set.
          properties:
            title:
              type: string
          additionalProperties:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/DocumentValue'
        links:
          type: object
          properties:
            self:
              type: string
              format: uri
      required:
      - id
      - attributes
    FacetItem:
      type: object
      properties:
        attributes:
          type: object
          properties:
            label:
              type: string
            value:
              type: string
            hits:
              type: integer
        links:
          type: object
          properties:
            self:
              type: string
              format: uri
    SearchResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        links:
          type: object
          properties:
            self:
              type: string
              format: uri
            next:
              type: string
              format: uri
            prev:
              type: string
              format: uri
            last:
              type: string
              format: uri
        meta:
          type: object
          properties:
            pages:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/Pages'
        data:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Record'
        included:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Included'
      required:
      - links
      - meta
      - data
    DocumentValue:
      type: object
      description: The envelope ORA wraps every metadata attribute in.
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
          description: Fragment URI identifying the attribute on the record.
        type:
          type: string
          const: document_value
        attributes:
          type: object
          properties:
            value:
              type: array
              items:
                type: string
            label:
              type: string
              description: Human-facing label for the attribute.
          required:
          - value
      required:
      - attributes
    ObjectResponse:
      type: object
      properties:
        links:
          type: object
          properties:
            self:
              type: string
              format: uri
        data:
          $ref: '#/components/schemas/Record'
      required:
      - data