The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, and one of the rare institutions in this cohort whose machine-readable footprint is genuinely its own rather than a vendor's contract running under its name. Caltech operates no central developer portal — neither api.caltech.edu nor developer.caltech.edu resolves — and publishes no OpenAPI, no llms.txt, no .well-known catalog and no status page. What it does operate is real research infrastructure on its own domain, engineered by four independent units with no shared convention between them: Caltech Library runs CaltechDATA and CaltechAUTHORS on self-hosted InvenioRDM, with public REST APIs, OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoints and DataCite DOIs minted under Caltech's own 10.22002 prefix; the Seismological Laboratory runs the Southern California Earthquake Data Center's FDSN web services; Caltech/IPAC runs three NASA archives — IRSA, NED and the NASA Exoplanet Archive — behind IVOA Virtual Observatory interfaces; and IMSS runs a Shibboleth identity provider registered in the InCommon federation. Five of the twelve education-regime domain standards are evidenced directly inside live Caltech contracts: shibboleth, saml, oai-pmh, datacite and orcid. The library discovery layer is the one genuinely outsourced surface, a Springshare tenancy at libguides.caltech.edu. The honest summary is that Caltech ships excellent open research data and almost no API product management around it.
California Institute of Technology publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: CaltechDATA REST API and SCEDC FDSN Web Services. Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, Private Research University, and Institute of Technology.
The California Institute of Technology catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.
California Institute of Technology’s developer surface includes engineering blog, support, authentication, and 28 more developer resources.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Education & Research regime, so
Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite.
If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your
provider repo — the
applicability map is public and we will correct it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Public REST API for CaltechDATA, the Caltech institutional research data repository. Returns published records with DataCite 4 metadata, files, version chains and DOIs. Verified...
OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for CaltechDATA. Verified live 2026-08-19 via the Identify verb (repositoryName CaltechDATA, protocolVersion 2.0) and via ListMetadataFo...
Caltech's institutional publications repository, also on self-hosted InvenioRDM. Exposes the same REST record API and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint, carrying ORCID and ROR identifiers...
A metadata service built and operated by Caltech Library (v1.6), harvesting its institutional repositories, public directory and archival systems into static JSON datasets publi...
The Southern California Earthquake Data Center, operated by the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, exposes FDSN-standard seismic web services — fdsnws-event, fdsnws-station and f...
The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, operated by Caltech/IPAC, exposes an IVOA TAP service over its extragalactic object catalog. Verified live 2026-08-19 returning TAP_SCHEMA ...
The NASA Exoplanet Archive, operated by Caltech/IPAC, exposes an IVOA TAP service over its confirmed-planet and related tables. Verified live 2026-08-19 returning real planet na...
Caltech operates its own Shibboleth identity provider at idp.caltech.edu, asserting scoped attributes for caltech.edu. The SAML 2.0 metadata is machine-readable and publicly ret...
Caltech Library's discovery and research-guide layer runs on Springshare LibGuides/LibApps rather than on institution-operated software. Recorded as a real institutional relatio...
Caltech Library's OpenURL link resolver is an EBSCO tenancy — instance `l7ubco` on the shared host resolver.ebsco.com — referenced from Caltech's own library pages. Recorded as ...
aid: caltech
name: California Institute of Technology
x-type: university
x-category: Private Research University
description: 'The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, and
one of the rare institutions in this cohort whose machine-readable footprint is genuinely its own rather than a vendor''s
contract running under its name. Caltech operates no central developer portal — neither api.caltech.edu nor developer.caltech.edu
resolves — and publishes no OpenAPI, no llms.txt, no .well-known catalog and no status page. What it does operate is real
research infrastructure on its own domain, engineered by four independent units with no shared convention between them:
Caltech Library runs CaltechDATA and CaltechAUTHORS on self-hosted InvenioRDM, with public REST APIs, OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoints
and DataCite DOIs minted under Caltech''s own 10.22002 prefix; the Seismological Laboratory runs the Southern California
Earthquake Data Center''s FDSN web services; Caltech/IPAC runs three NASA archives — IRSA, NED and the NASA Exoplanet Archive
— behind IVOA Virtual Observatory interfaces; and IMSS runs a Shibboleth identity provider registered in the InCommon federation.
Five of the twelve education-regime domain standards are evidenced directly inside live Caltech contracts: shibboleth, saml,
oai-pmh, datacite and orcid. The library discovery layer is the one genuinely outsourced surface, a Springshare tenancy
at libguides.caltech.edu. The honest summary is that Caltech ships excellent open research data and almost no API product
management around it.'
type: Index
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: true
label: Free
confidence: high
source:
- plans
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/caltech.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/caltech/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Private Research University
- Institute of Technology
- United States
- California
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Research Repository
- Identity Federation
- Astronomy
- Seismology
- Research Computing
- OAI-PMH
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: caltech:caltechdata-rest
name: CaltechDATA REST API
x-operator: institution
x-operator-rationale: Host data.caltech.edu is under the institution's own registrable domain. The repository software is
InvenioRDM — open source, self-hosted by Caltech Library — not an account on a vendor's shared platform.
description: Public REST API for CaltechDATA, the Caltech institutional research data repository. Returns published records
with DataCite 4 metadata, files, version chains and DOIs. Verified live 2026-08-19 returning JSON record hits unauthenticated,
and verified returning a structured JSON 404 on an unknown id.
humanURL: https://caltechlibrary.github.io/caltechdata_api/
baseURL: https://data.caltech.edu/api/records
tags:
- Research Data
- Repository
- InvenioRDM
- DataCite
- ORCID
- Open Data
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/caltech-caltechdata-openapi.yml
method: derived
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/caltech-caltechdata-record-schema.json
method: derived
- type: Example
url: examples/caltech-caltechdata-record-example.json
method: probed
- type: Documentation
url: https://caltechlibrary.github.io/caltechdata_api/
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/caltechlibrary/caltechdata_api
- aid: caltech:caltechdata-oai
name: CaltechDATA OAI-PMH
x-operator: institution
description: OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for CaltechDATA. Verified live 2026-08-19 via the Identify verb (repositoryName
CaltechDATA, protocolVersion 2.0) and via ListMetadataFormats, which advertises oai_dc, dcat, marc21, marcxml, datacite,
oai_datacite, datacite4 and oai_datacite4.
humanURL: https://data.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://data.caltech.edu/oai2d
tags:
- Research Data
- OAI-PMH
- Metadata
- Harvesting
- DataCite
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/caltech-education-standards.yml
method: probed
- type: Documentation
url: https://data.caltech.edu/
- aid: caltech:caltechauthors
name: CaltechAUTHORS REST API and OAI-PMH
x-operator: institution
description: 'Caltech''s institutional publications repository, also on self-hosted InvenioRDM. Exposes the same REST record
API and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint, carrying ORCID and ROR identifiers and Caltech-specific custom fields (journal:journal,
caltech:groups, caltech:publication_status). Verified live 2026-08-19. Note: intermittent HTTP 522 (Cloudflare origin
unreachable) was observed between successful calls — the surface is live but flapping, and Caltech publishes no status
page on which to confirm that.'
humanURL: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/api/records
tags:
- Publications
- Repository
- InvenioRDM
- OAI-PMH
- ORCID
- Open Access
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/
- aid: caltech:library-feeds
name: Caltech Library Feeds
x-operator: institution
description: A metadata service built and operated by Caltech Library (v1.6), harvesting its institutional repositories,
public directory and archival systems into static JSON datasets published for data-science use. Built on caltechlibrary's
own open-source irdmtools and dataset toolchain. Verified live 2026-08-19 — the people dataset returned 3,885 person records
each carrying an ORCID field, and the groups dataset returned 4.9 MB of JSON.
humanURL: https://feeds.library.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://feeds.library.caltech.edu/
tags:
- Research Data
- Metadata
- Bibliometrics
- ORCID
- Open Data
- JSON
properties:
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/caltech-library-feeds-person-schema.json
method: derived
- type: Documentation
url: https://feeds.library.caltech.edu/
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/caltechlibrary/irdmtools
- aid: caltech:scedc-fdsn
name: SCEDC FDSN Web Services
x-operator: institution
x-operator-rationale: service.scedc.caltech.edu is under the institution's own registrable domain and resolves into Caltech
address space. SCEDC is a facility of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory; FDSN is an open community standard it implements.
description: The Southern California Earthquake Data Center, operated by the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, exposes FDSN-standard
seismic web services — fdsnws-event, fdsnws-station and fdsnws-dataselect. Verified live 2026-08-19 with real queries
returning SCEDC catalog earthquakes and CI-network station metadata, plus verified 204 no-data and structured 400 error
behaviour. The best-versioned surface in Caltech's estate.
humanURL: https://scedc.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://service.scedc.caltech.edu/fdsnws
tags:
- Seismology
- Earthquakes
- FDSN
- Open Data
- Research Data
- Time Series
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/caltech-scedc-fdsn-openapi.yml
method: derived
- type: Example
url: examples/caltech-scedc-event-example.yml
method: probed
- type: WADL
url: https://service.scedc.caltech.edu/fdsnws/dataselect/1/application.wadl
method: searched
- type: Documentation
url: https://service.scedc.caltech.edu/
- aid: caltech:irsa-vo
name: IRSA Virtual Observatory APIs (Caltech/IPAC)
x-operator: institution
x-operator-rationale: IPAC is a division of Caltech and operates IRSA on the institution's own domain. The archive is NASA-funded
and holds NASA mission data, but Caltech is the operator of the service and its interfaces.
description: 'The NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive exposes IVOA-standard Virtual Observatory interfaces — Table Access
Protocol (TAP/ADQL), Simple Cone Search and Simple Image Access v2 — over NASA infrared and submillimeter mission catalogs
and images. Verified live 2026-08-19: the TAP sync endpoint returned real TAP_SCHEMA rows, and the capabilities document
declares VOSI capabilities, availability and tables, DALI examples, and an IVOA SSO cookie security method.'
humanURL: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/voapi.html
baseURL: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP
tags:
- Astronomy
- Virtual Observatory
- TAP
- ADQL
- NASA
- IPAC
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/voapi.html
- type: Documentation
url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/program_interface/api_catalogs.html
- type: Capabilities
url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP/capabilities
method: probed
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC
- aid: caltech:ned-tap
name: NED Table Access Protocol (Caltech/IPAC)
x-operator: institution
description: The NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, operated by Caltech/IPAC, exposes an IVOA TAP service over its extragalactic
object catalog. Verified live 2026-08-19 returning TAP_SCHEMA rows as CSV, and returning a spec-conformant VOTable error
document — carrying QUERY_STATUS, ERROR_TYPE, PROVIDER and a correlatable REQ_ID — when the REQUEST parameter is omitted.
The strongest error semantics in Caltech's estate.
humanURL: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Documents/Guides/Interface/TAP
baseURL: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/tap
tags:
- Astronomy
- Virtual Observatory
- TAP
- ADQL
- NASA
- IPAC
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Documents/Guides/Interface/TAP
- type: Capabilities
url: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/tap/capabilities
method: probed
- aid: caltech:exoplanet-archive-tap
name: NASA Exoplanet Archive TAP (Caltech/IPAC)
x-operator: institution
description: The NASA Exoplanet Archive, operated by Caltech/IPAC, exposes an IVOA TAP service over its confirmed-planet
and related tables. Verified live 2026-08-19 returning real planet names from the `ps` table as CSV.
humanURL: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/program_interfaces.html
baseURL: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP
tags:
- Astronomy
- Exoplanets
- Virtual Observatory
- TAP
- NASA
- IPAC
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/program_interfaces.html
- aid: caltech:identity-federation
name: Caltech Shibboleth Identity Provider (InCommon)
x-operator: institution
x-operator-rationale: An identity federation entry is institution-operated by definition — the entityID, the signing keys
and the attribute authority cannot be held by a vendor on the institution's behalf.
description: Caltech operates its own Shibboleth identity provider at idp.caltech.edu, asserting scoped attributes for caltech.edu.
The SAML 2.0 metadata is machine-readable and publicly retrievable both from the IdP itself and, signed, from the InCommon
metadata query service — registrationAuthority https://incommon.org, and therefore reachable through eduGAIN. Advertises
SAML 1.1, SAML 2.0 and the Shibboleth-native AuthnRequest binding, with HTTP-POST, HTTP-Redirect and POST-SimpleSign SSO
bindings and a SOAP attribute authority. Verified live 2026-08-19 from both sources. This is the single most under-catalogued
class of university API surface.
humanURL: https://www.imss.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://idp.caltech.edu/idp/shibboleth
tags:
- Identity Federation
- Shibboleth
- SAML
- InCommon
- eduGAIN
- Single Sign-On
properties:
- type: Metadata
url: https://idp.caltech.edu/idp/shibboleth
method: probed
- type: Metadata
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Fidp.caltech.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
method: probed
- type: Example
url: examples/caltech-shibboleth-metadata-example.yml
method: probed
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/caltech-education-standards.yml
method: probed
- aid: caltech:libguides-springshare
name: Caltech Library Guides (Springshare tenancy)
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-rationale: libguides.caltech.edu is an institution-branded subdomain that CNAMEs to a Springshare-operated CloudFront
distribution; Caltech is site_id 64 on Springshare's shared platform. The content and the tenancy are Caltech's; the contract
is Springshare's. The generic vendor API at lgapi-us.libapps.com (verified 401 without a key) is NOT saved under this
institution — it belongs to Springshare's own repo.
description: 'Caltech Library''s discovery and research-guide layer runs on Springshare LibGuides/LibApps rather than on
institution-operated software. Recorded as a real institutional relationship — one of the few programmable surfaces most
universities have — with no vendor specification saved under Caltech''s slug. Verified live 2026-08-19: libguides.caltech.edu
200, caltech.libapps.com 200.'
humanURL: https://libguides.caltech.edu/
baseURL: https://libguides.caltech.edu/
tags:
- Library
- Research Guides
- Springshare
- LibGuides
- Tenant
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://library.caltech.edu/search
- aid: caltech:ebsco-resolver
name: EBSCO Link Resolver (Caltech instance)
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-rationale: Caltech holds instance `l7ubco` on EBSCO's shared resolver host. The host is the vendor's and is shared
by every customer; only the instance is Caltech's.
description: 'Caltech Library''s OpenURL link resolver is an EBSCO tenancy — instance `l7ubco` on the shared host resolver.ebsco.com
— referenced from Caltech''s own library pages. Recorded as a relationship only — no EBSCO contract is saved under this
institution. No baseURL is emitted: the resolver returns 404/400 to requests without OpenURL parameters, so the endpoint
could not be confirmed by a clean 200 and a dead pointer would read as a claim. Confidence medium — the instance is evidenced
only from Caltech''s own markup.'
humanURL: https://library.caltech.edu/search
tags:
- Library
- Link Resolver
- OpenURL
- EBSCO
- Tenant
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.caltech.edu/
- type: Blog
url: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news
- type: BlogRSS
url: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/rss
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.caltech.edu/privacy-notice
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/california-institute-of-technology/
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/caltechlibrary
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC
- type: OpenData
url: https://data.caltech.edu/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://data.caltech.edu/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Fidp.caltech.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://catalog.caltech.edu/
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://hpc.caltech.edu/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://www.imss.caltech.edu/services/ai
- type: Support
url: https://library.caltech.edu/
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/caltech-caltechdata-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/caltech-scedc-fdsn-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/caltech-caltechdata-record-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/caltech-library-feeds-person-schema.json
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/caltech-education-standards.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/caltech-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/caltech-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/caltech-lifecycle.yml
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/caltech-vocabulary.yml
- type: Rules
url: rules/caltech-rules.yml
- type: JSONLD
url: json-ld/caltech-context.jsonld
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/caltech-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/caltech-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/caltech-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/caltech-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: institution_operated_surfaces_verified
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
detail: 'Nine institution-operated surfaces and two vendor tenancies were settled by live probe on 2026-08-19, with no vendor
contract saved under Caltech''s slug. Caltech is an outlier in this cohort: its research surfaces really are its own,
self-hosted on caltech.edu, rather than a Figshare or Pure tenancy misread as institutional. Real absences confirmed,
not assumed: no central developer portal (api.caltech.edu and developer.caltech.edu both fail DNS resolution), no Caltech-published
OpenAPI for any surface, no llms.txt (404), no .well-known/security.txt (404), no status page, no published deprecation
policy or changelog, no OAuth authorization server, no documented scope vocabulary, and no machine-readable course-catalog
interface behind catalog.caltech.edu. Seven of the twelve education-regime domain standards were probed and not found
(scim, lti, oneroster, ed-fi, caliper, qti, crossref); five were confirmed inside live contracts (shibboleth, saml, oai-pmh,
datacite, orcid). Two partial blocks encountered and recorded as findings rather than gaps: scedc.caltech.edu documentation
pages return 403 to non-browser clients while the data services return 200, and www.caltech.edu/about/news returns 403
while its Atom feed returns 200. CaltechAUTHORS returned intermittent 522 between successful calls.'
evidence:
- url: https://data.caltech.edu/api/records?size=1
status: 200
- url: https://data.caltech.edu/oai2d?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/api/records?size=1
status: 200
- url: https://feeds.library.caltech.edu/people/people_list.json
status: 200
- url: https://service.scedc.caltech.edu/fdsnws/event/1/query?starttime=2026-08-01&endtime=2026-08-05&minmagnitude=3&format=text
status: 200
- url: https://service.scedc.caltech.edu/fdsnws/station/1/query?net=CI&sta=PAS&level=station&format=text
status: 200
- url: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP/sync?QUERY=SELECT+TOP+2+*+FROM+TAP_SCHEMA.tables&FORMAT=csv
status: 200
- url: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/tap/sync?REQUEST=doQuery&LANG=ADQL&FORMAT=csv&QUERY=SELECT+table_name+FROM+TAP_SCHEMA.tables
status: 200
- url: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/TAP/sync?query=select+top+2+pl_name+from+ps&format=csv
status: 200
- url: https://idp.caltech.edu/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
- url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Fidp.caltech.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
status: 200
- url: https://libguides.caltech.edu/
status: 200
- url: https://lgapi-us.libapps.com/1.2/guides?site_id=64
status: 401
- url: https://www.caltech.edu/llms.txt
status: 404
- url: https://www.caltech.edu/.well-known/security.txt
status: 404
- url: https://scedc.caltech.edu/data/web-services.html
status: 403
- url: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news
status: 403
- url: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/rss
status: 200
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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