King Saud University (جامعة الملك سعود, KSU) is Saudi Arabia's oldest public research university, founded in Riyadh in 1957. Contrary to the 2026-06-03 review of this profile, KSU does operate public, machine-readable surfaces on its own domain — they are documented only in Arabic, which is why an English-language review missed them. Its Data Management Office publishes an institutional open-data programme at data.ksu.edu.sa: 852 dataset distribution files across seven dataset families in JSON, XML, RDF/XML, CSV and XLSX, unauthenticated, under a KSU-authored open-data licence, on a declared annual cadence, with an Arabic API guide and a 13-page reference PDF. Separately, the university runs its own identity plane at iam.ksu.edu.sa, which serves a public OpenID Connect discovery document and RFC 8414 authorization-server metadata, and whose SAML 2.0 identity provider is registered in eduGAIN through the Saudi Maeen Identity Federation. What KSU does NOT publish is a developer programme: there is no developer portal, no API reference in English, no OpenAPI, no apis.json, no llms.txt, no status page and no self-service client registration — the advertised OAuth registration endpoint answers 404. The filtered open-data query API the university still documents has been withdrawn from its own router. Everything else students and staff touch — Edugate, MyKSU, the Blackboard LMS, the library catalogue — is either a gated end-user application or a vendor platform running under a KSU hostname.
King Saud University publishes 6 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Datasets API, Identity API, and 4 more. Tagged areas include Education, Higher Education, University, Public Research University, and Saudi Arabia.
The King Saud University catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context.
King Saud University’s developer surface includes API reference, documentation, authentication, engineering blog, support, and 17 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.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it
carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts
themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already
holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in
front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created.
Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet,
not penalised by it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Interfaces this provider implements that became standards by being copied rather than ratified. Each is profiled by the API Commons, and the evidence column says how the claim was established — not that it was made.
King Saud University's SAML 2.0 identity provider is published into the eduGAIN interfederation metadata by the Maeen Identity Federation (https://www.maeen.sa, federation code ...
King Saud University is Crossref member 19827 and owns DOI prefix 10.33948, under which Crossref reports 1,521 registered DOIs (354 current, 1,167 backfile) as of 2026-09-01. Th...
King Saud University is registered in the Research Organization Registry as https://ror.org/02f81g417, the canonical machine-readable identifier for the institution in scholarly...
King Saud University's learning management system is a Blackboard Learn SaaS tenancy fronted by a university hostname. Requesting it returns a SAML AuthnRequest to the universit...
aid: king-saud-university
name: King Saud University
description: 'King Saud University (جامعة الملك سعود, KSU) is Saudi Arabia''s oldest public research university, founded in
Riyadh in 1957. Contrary to the 2026-06-03 review of this profile, KSU does operate public, machine-readable surfaces on
its own domain — they are documented only in Arabic, which is why an English-language review missed them. Its Data Management
Office publishes an institutional open-data programme at data.ksu.edu.sa: 852 dataset distribution files across seven dataset
families in JSON, XML, RDF/XML, CSV and XLSX, unauthenticated, under a KSU-authored open-data licence, on a declared annual
cadence, with an Arabic API guide and a 13-page reference PDF. Separately, the university runs its own identity plane at
iam.ksu.edu.sa, which serves a public OpenID Connect discovery document and RFC 8414 authorization-server metadata, and
whose SAML 2.0 identity provider is registered in eduGAIN through the Saudi Maeen Identity Federation. What KSU does NOT
publish is a developer programme: there is no developer portal, no API reference in English, no OpenAPI, no apis.json, no
llms.txt, no status page and no self-service client registration — the advertised OAuth registration endpoint answers 404.
The filtered open-data query API the university still documents has been withdrawn from its own router. Everything else
students and staff touch — Edugate, MyKSU, the Blackboard LMS, the library catalogue — is either a gated end-user application
or a vendor platform running under a KSU hostname.'
type: Index
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: high
source:
- openapi
- probed
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: none
trial: false
try_now: true
public: true
label: Free · open data needs no account; identity plane is not self-service
confidence: high
source:
- probed
- plans
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
position: Producing
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/king-saud-university.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/king-saud-university/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-api-posture: public-undocumented
x-api-posture-basis: observed
x-api-posture-note: Public, unauthenticated, machine-readable surfaces exist and were fetched, but the university runs no
developer programme around them — Arabic-only guidance on the open-data portal, and nothing at all for the identity plane
beyond its own discovery documents.
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Public Research University
- Saudi Arabia
- Middle East
- Riyadh
- Open Data
- Research Data
- Identity Federation
- SSO
- Research
- Linked Data
tags_raw:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Public Research University
- Saudi Arabia
- Middle East
- Riyadh
- Open Data
- Research Data
- Identity Federation
- Single Sign-On
- Research
- Linked Data
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-09-01'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: king-saud-university:edugain-idp
name: King Saud University identity provider in eduGAIN (via Maeen)
x-operator: federation
x-operator-basis: A federation aggregate is shared by definition; the identity provider whose metadata it carries is King
Saud University's own.
description: 'King Saud University''s SAML 2.0 identity provider is published into the eduGAIN interfederation metadata
by the Maeen Identity Federation (https://www.maeen.sa, federation code SA-MIF, an eduGAIN member since 2019-07-02). The
entity is entityID http://SSO.ksu.edu.sa/adfs/services/trust, role IDPSSODescriptor, English display name "King Saud University",
scope ksu.edu.sa, first seen in eduGAIN on 2020-02-02. The metadata itself lives in the eduGAIN aggregate at https://mds.edugain.org/edugain-v2.xml,
served as application/samlmetadata+xml. This is a machine-readable, institution-owned identity surface — one of the strongest
a university has, and the class this cohort was most completely missing. The entityID retains an ADFS-shaped identifier
from before the university''s migration to PingFederate, which is correct practice: a SAML entityID is a name, not a location.'
humanURL: https://technical.edugain.org/entities?id=671188
tags:
- Identity Federation
- eduGAIN
- SAML
- Shibboleth Metadata
- Maeen
- Saudi Arabia
properties:
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://technical.edugain.org/entities?id=671188
- type: Metadata
url: https://mds.edugain.org/edugain-v2.xml
- type: RegistrationAuthority
url: https://www.maeen.sa/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/king-saud-university-conformance.yml
- aid: king-saud-university:crossref
name: Crossref membership and DOI prefix
x-operator: registry
x-operator-basis: Crossref is an identifier registry the institution is registered in. The registry's own contract is not
King Saud University's; the membership is.
description: King Saud University is Crossref member 19827 and owns DOI prefix 10.33948, under which Crossref reports 1,521
registered DOIs (354 current, 1,167 backfile) as of 2026-09-01. The university's scholarly journals are administered by
its Scientific Journals Department at journals.ksu.edu.sa; the flagship Journal of King Saud University series is published
through Elsevier, so the hosting platform is a vendor's while the registrant is the institution.
humanURL: https://api.crossref.org/members/19827
tags:
- Crossref
- DOI
- Scholarly Publishing
- Registry Membership
properties:
- type: RegistryRecord
url: https://api.crossref.org/members/19827
- type: Prefix
url: https://api.crossref.org/prefixes/10.33948
- type: Website
url: https://journals.ksu.edu.sa/ar
- aid: king-saud-university:ror
name: Research Organization Registry identifier
x-operator: registry
x-operator-basis: ROR is an identifier registry the institution is registered in; the ROR API belongs to ROR, the record
belongs to King Saud University.
description: King Saud University is registered in the Research Organization Registry as https://ror.org/02f81g417, the
canonical machine-readable identifier for the institution in scholarly infrastructure. Confirmed against the ROR v2 API
on 2026-09-01.
humanURL: https://ror.org/02f81g417
tags:
- ROR
- Persistent Identifier
- Registry Membership
- Research Infrastructure
properties:
- type: RegistryRecord
url: https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations/02f81g417
- type: Identifier
url: https://ror.org/02f81g417
- aid: king-saud-university:blackboard-lms
name: KSU learning management system (Blackboard Learn SaaS tenancy)
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-basis: lms.ksu.edu.sa is a CNAME to ksu.blackboard.com, which resolves onward into Anthology's Blackboard Learn
SaaS estate (learn.6933129eab8d1.euc1.prod-01.core.blackboard.com). The hostname is the university's; the platform and
its contract are Anthology's.
description: 'King Saud University''s learning management system is a Blackboard Learn SaaS tenancy fronted by a university
hostname. Requesting it returns a SAML AuthnRequest to the university''s own identity provider, which makes the tenancy
genuine and the identity institution-operated. No contract is saved here: any API, LTI capability or specification for
this platform is Anthology''s engineering, not KSU''s, and belongs to Anthology''s own profile. Recorded because a tenancy
is a real institutional fact and one of the few programmable surfaces most universities have.'
humanURL: https://lms.ksu.edu.sa/
tags:
- Learning Management System
- Blackboard
- Anthology
- Tenants
- SAML
tags_raw:
- Learning Management System
- Blackboard
- Anthology
- Tenant
- SAML
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://lms.ksu.edu.sa/
- aid: king-saud-university:king-saud-university-datasets-api
name: King Saud University Datasets API
description: Stable distributions of King Saud University open datasets.
humanURL: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar
baseURL: https://data.ksu.edu.sa
tags:
- Datasets
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/king-saud-university-datasets-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/1163
- type: APIReference
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/api/guide
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/1178
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/king-saud-university-open-data-datasets-schema.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/king-saud-university-open-data-examples.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/king-saud-university-lifecycle.yml
- type: OpenIDConnectDiscovery
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/openid-configuration
- type: AuthorizationServerMetadata
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
- type: JWKS
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/pf/JWKS
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/king-saud-university-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/king-saud-university-scopes.yml
- aid: king-saud-university:king-saud-university-identity-api
name: King Saud University Identity API
description: OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect endpoints of the King Saud University authorization server.
humanURL: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar
baseURL: https://data.ksu.edu.sa
tags:
- Identity
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/king-saud-university-identity-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/1163
- type: APIReference
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/api/guide
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/1178
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/king-saud-university-open-data-datasets-schema.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/king-saud-university-open-data-examples.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/king-saud-university-lifecycle.yml
- type: OpenIDConnectDiscovery
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/openid-configuration
- type: AuthorizationServerMetadata
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
- type: JWKS
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/pf/JWKS
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/king-saud-university-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/king-saud-university-scopes.yml
common:
- type: Website
url: https://ksu.edu.sa/en
- type: OpenData
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar
- type: APIReference
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/api/guide
- type: Documentation
url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/1163
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://ksu.edu.sa/ar/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://ksu.edu.sa/ar/privacy
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://technical.edugain.org/entities?id=671188
- type: Authentication
url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/openid-configuration
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://aio.ksu.edu.sa/ar/node/2976
- type: AITooling
url: https://thakaa.ksu.edu.sa/en
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://library.ksu.edu.sa/en
- type: Blog
url: https://news.ksu.edu.sa/ar
- type: Support
url: https://ksu.edu.sa/en/apps
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/king-saud-university/
- type: Twitter
url: https://x.com/_KSU
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/king-saud-university-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/king-saud-university-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/king-saud-university-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/king-saud-university-finops.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/king-saud-university-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/king-saud-university-lifecycle.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: covered
detail: 'Two institution-operated, machine-readable surfaces were found, fetched and described: the KSU Open Data distribution
programme at data.ksu.edu.sa (852 files, five formats, unauthenticated, 20 of 20 sampled files live) and the university''s
own OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect / SAML identity plane at iam.ksu.edu.sa (discovery documents and JWKS all served anonymously).
Both were missed by the 2026-06-03 review because every piece of guidance for them is Arabic-only — data.ksu.edu.sa/en/api/guide
is a 404 while data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/api/guide is a 200. Three relationships were recorded rather than credited as contracts:
eduGAIN/Maeen federation membership, Crossref membership with prefix 10.33948, and a ROR identifier. One tenancy was recorded
and its contract deliberately not saved: lms.ksu.edu.sa is a CNAME to ksu.blackboard.com (Anthology Blackboard Learn SaaS).
Three claimed surfaces are dead and are not carried as pointers: the DSpace repository and its OAI-PMH endpoint at repository.ksu.edu.sa
(NXDOMAIN, though ROAR still lists it), the library catalogue at catalog.library.ksu.edu.sa (resolves, TCP connection
fails), and edugate.ksu.edu.sa (timed out on three consecutive attempts, having returned 200 in June). One Figshare false
positive was tested and rejected: ksu.figshare.com answers HTTP 202 with an AWS WAF challenge, but so does a control request
to a deliberately nonexistent subdomain, so it is not evidence of a KSU tenancy and none is recorded. What the university
genuinely lacks is a developer programme — no portal, no English documentation, no OpenAPI, no apis.json, no llms.txt,
no agent card, no status page, and an advertised OAuth client-registration endpoint that answers 404.'
evidence:
- url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/ar/api/guide
status: 200
- url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/en/api/guide
status: 404
- url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/sites/data.ksu.edu.sa/files/users/user976/KSU-DMO-OD-DATASET-Employees-1444-AH.json
status: 200
- url: https://data.ksu.edu.sa/api/views/data_api?display_id=employees&limit=3&_format=json
status: 404
- url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/openid-configuration
status: 200
- url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
status: 200
- url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/pf/JWKS
status: 200
- url: https://iam.ksu.edu.sa/as/clients.oauth2
status: 404
- url: https://mds.edugain.org/edugain-v2.xml
status: 200
- url: https://api.crossref.org/members/19827
status: 200
- url: https://ror.org/02f81g417
status: 200
- url: https://lms.ksu.edu.sa/
status: 200
- url: https://repository.ksu.edu.sa/
status: 0
- url: https://catalog.library.ksu.edu.sa/
status: 0
- url: https://edugate.ksu.edu.sa/ksu/init
status: 0
- url: https://ksu.edu.sa/apis.json
status: 404
- url: https://ksu.edu.sa/llms.txt
status: 404
- url: https://ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/agent-card.json
status: 404
- url: https://ksu.edu.sa/.well-known/security.txt
status: 404
checked: '2026-09-01'
x-enrichment:
pipeline: pipeline-university
run: '2026-09-01'
note: Re-profiled under the university pipeline's operator axis. The 2026-06-03 profile recorded a single "No Public Documented
API" entry; that entry is withdrawn as factually wrong. No vendor contract was added to this repo and none was found in
it.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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