FaceBase ERMrest Data API
Keyless, read-only JSON REST API of the FaceBase craniofacial data hub, an NIDCR-funded resource led from USC and engineered by USC's Information Sciences Institute. GET https://www.facebase.org/ermrest/catalog/1 returns 200 application/json with the catalog root; GET https://www.facebase.org/ermrest/catalog/1/schema returns 200 application/json, 923,861 bytes, the full introspectable relational model. Attribution is settled from what the surface says about itself rather than from the hostname: the catalog's own annotation keys are namespaced tag:isrd.isi.edu (USC ISI's Informatics Systems Research Division), the responses carry a deriva-client-context CORS header, and the ERMrest server itself is USC ISI's Apache-2.0 project at github.com/informatics-isi-edu/ermrest, actively maintained as of 2026-06-10. Its DOIs are minted under USC's own DataCite provider account as client usc.facebase (1,410 DOIs). Recorded as institution rather than tenant on that basis, with the caveat stated plainly: facebase.org is a consortium domain, not a usc.edu registrable domain, so a host-only verdict would not reach this conclusion. No OpenAPI is saved — ERMrest is a generic protocol shared by every DERIVA deployment (gudmap.org and atlas-d2k.org answer the same paths), so the product contract belongs with the software, while this deployment, its data and its DOIs are USC's.