King's College London

aid: kings-college-london
name: King's College London
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'King''s College London is a UK public research university and Russell Group member, founded in 1829, ranked
  #40 in the QS World University Rankings. Re-profiled on 2026-08-19 under the API Evangelist university pipeline, which settles
  WHO OPERATES a surface before crediting it to the institution. The June 2026 profile credited King''s with eleven API entries
  and ten OpenAPI contracts; every one of them was api.figshare.com/v2 — a single Figshare document that the same pass attributed
  to twenty-five different universities — split by tag into eleven apparent surfaces. Those contracts, and the collections
  and agentic-access artifacts derived from them, have been removed. What is left is what King''s actually operates. The genuine
  find is the e-Research AI Hub at ai.create.kcl.ac.uk: King''s own OpenAI-compatible LLM inference platform for researchers,
  live, bearer-authenticated, metered and billed, running on King''s own infrastructure — a real institution-operated API,
  and a rare one in this cohort. Alongside it sit four tenancies that are real institutional facts but somebody else''s engineering:
  the King''s Research Portal OAI-PMH endpoint (Elsevier Pure), the research data repository (Figshare), LibrarySearch (Ex
  Libris Primo) and the UK federation identity provider (OpenAthens). King''s holds its own DataCite membership and prefix,
  and is registered in the UK Access Management Federation and eduGAIN. It publishes no OpenAPI, no developer portal, no open
  data portal, no llms.txt and no security.txt.'
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: affiliation
  trial: true
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free tier for King's affiliates · metered beyond it · no public signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-08-19'
  method: probed
position: Consumer
access: Private
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/kings-college-london.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/kings-college-london/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Russell Group
- United Kingdom
- London
- Research
- Research Computing
- Artificial Intelligence
- Institutional Repository
- Identity Federation
- OAI-PMH
- Library
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-coverage:
  state: gated
  reason: 'King''s operates exactly one public-internet API of its own, and it requires a King''s credential. The e-Research
    AI Hub answers 401 with a structured error envelope, which proves it is live and callable, but its API reference, model
    list, rate limits and billing rules all sit behind Microsoft Entra ID sign-in and cannot be read from outside. The rest
    of the programmable footprint is either vendor software running under a kcl.ac.uk hostname or, in the case of the CREATE
    Cloud OpenStack API, on a hostname that publishes no public DNS at all. Nothing blocked us: 40+ hosts and paths were probed
    successfully and the thinness is the institution''s, not a fetch failure.'
  detail: 'Verified institution-operated and live: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/api/v1/models returns 401 application/json
    with the OpenAI error envelope ({"error":{"message":"Unauthorized — no bearer token provided","type":"invalid_request_error",
    "param":null,"code":"invalid_api_key"}}) from nginx/1.30.4, and a request bearing an unknown key returns a different message
    ("invalid API key"), which establishes the token is validated rather than merely required. King''s own documentation at
    docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/ describes it as "King''s College London''s AI inference platform for researchers", OpenAI-
    compatible, with chat completions, image generation, streaming, RAG, agent workflows and MCP integration, free starter
    tokens and project budgets thereafter. No contract is published for it: /openapi.json, /api/openapi.json, /v1/models and
    /.well-known/openapi all return the application''s 404. Institution-operated but unreachable: cloud.er.kcl.ac.uk, the
    CREATE Cloud OpenStack API documented at docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/cloud/openstack_api/, has no public DNS record on 1.1.1.1
    or 8.8.8.8 — it is VPN-only, and its application-credential and root-CA flow is documented but not probeable. Institution-authored
    but internal: the KCL e-Research Authentication API (github.com/kcl-eresearch/auth_api) documents its own REST surface
    for SSH keys, OpenVPN certificates and MFA requests in a public README, with no public base URL; and kcl-eresearch/artemis
    is a King''s-authored Perplexity-compatible research API server. Neither ships an OpenAPI. Verified live but tenant-operated:
    kclpure.kcl.ac.uk (CNAME kings.elsevierpure.com), kcl.figshare.com (CNAME figshare.com), librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk (CNAME
    kcl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com), keats.kcl.ac.uk (CNAME kcl-vle.bloom.ulcc.ac.uk) and the UK federation IdP whose SSO endpoints
    are on login.openathens.net. Confirmed absent: no DNS for data.kcl.ac.uk, developer.kcl.ac.uk, courses.kcl.ac.uk, sis.kcl.ac.uk,
    idp.kcl.ac.uk or sso.kcl.ac.uk; api.kcl.ac.uk resolves to 137.73.130.161 but accepts no TCP connection on 80 or 443 across
    three attempts at 30s, 40s and 60s; www.kcl.ac.uk/llms.txt and /.well-known/security.txt both 404. The development identity
    provider https://kclidpdev.kcl.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth is registered in the UK federation but carries the hide-from-discovery
    entity category and is treated as a placeholder, not a surface.'
  assessed: '2026-08-19'
  method: pipeline-university
  evidence:
  - url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/api/v1/models
    status: 401
  - url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/
    status: 200
  - url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/docs
    status: 200
  - url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/openapi.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/api/openapi.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/
    status: 200
  - url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/cloud/openstack_api/
    status: 200
  - url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/sitemap.xml
    status: 200
  - url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=ListMetadataFormats
    status: 200
  - url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=ListSets
    status: 200
  - url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=persons:all
    status: 200
  - url: http://metadata.ukfederation.org.uk/ukfederation-metadata.xml
    status: 200
  - url: https://met.refeds.org/met/entity/https%3A%2F%2Fkclidp.kcl.ac.uk%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth/
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/hcbr
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.datacite.org/dois?provider-id=hcbr
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.crossref.org/members?query=king%27s+college+london
    status: 200
  - url: https://librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk/
    status: 200
  - url: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/webservice/rest/server.php
    status: 200
  - url: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/mod/lti/auth.php
    status: 200
  - url: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/.well-known/openid-configuration
    status: 404
  - url: https://kcl.figshare.com/
    status: 202
  - url: https://portal.er.kcl.ac.uk/
    status: 200
  - url: https://github.com/kcl-eresearch
    status: 200
  - url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kcl-eresearch/auth_api/main/README.md
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/llms.txt
    status: 404
  - url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/.well-known/security.txt
    status: 404
  - url: https://api.kcl.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://cloud.er.kcl.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  removed: 10
  removed_note: Ten OpenAPI contracts and eleven apis[] entries, all of them api.figshare.com/v2, plus the twenty Postman/OpenCollection
    files and the agentic-access classification derived from them.
apis:
- aid: kings-college-london:er-ai-hub
  name: King's e-Research AI Hub API
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: ai.create.kcl.ac.uk is a CNAME to lbext-vip.er.kcl.ac.uk -> 193.61.202.139, King's own e-Research load
    balancer, the same origin that serves docs.er.kcl.ac.uk, er.kcl.ac.uk and portal.er.kcl.ac.uk. No vendor CNAME, no shared
    platform host. The service is described in King's own documentation as "King's College London's AI inference platform
    for researchers", support runs to support@er.kcl.ac.uk, and accounts are billed against King's project budgets. This is
    King's engineering on King's infrastructure.
  description: 'An OpenAI-compatible LLM inference API operated by King''s e-Research for researchers, students and staff.
    Per King''s documentation it serves chat completions against a curated set of hosted models, image generation, streaming
    responses, RAG pipelines over user documents, deep-research and agent workflows, and integrations with VS Code, OpenCode
    and MCP servers — all reachable by pointing an official OpenAI client at a new base URL with an AI Hub API key. New accounts
    receive an allocation of free tokens; sustained use is metered against a project budget. Verified live from outside: GET
    /api/v1/models answers 401 application/json with the OpenAI error envelope, and answers differently for a missing header
    than for an unknown key. No OpenAPI is saved for this surface, because King''s publishes none — the API reference at /docs
    is behind Microsoft Entra ID sign-in, and authoring a contract from two probed responses would credit King''s with a document
    it has not written. This is the single most consequential finding of the re-profile: a research university that built
    and operates its own agent-facing inference API.'
  humanURL: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/
  baseURL: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/api/v1
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - LLM
  - Inference
  - Research Computing
  - OpenAI-Compatible
  tags_raw:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - LLM
  - Inference
  - Research Computing
  - OpenAI Compatible
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/
  - type: Website
    url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://ai.create.kcl.ac.uk/docs
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/kings-college-london-authentication.yml
  - type: Errors
    url: errors/kings-college-london-problem-types.yml
  - type: Support
    url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/getting_help/
- aid: kings-college-london:pure-oai
  name: King's Research Portal (Pure) OAI-PMH
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: 'kclpure.kcl.ac.uk is a CNAME to kings.elsevierpure.com -> eu.prod.elsevierpure.com (-> cloudflare).
    That is a platform CNAME, not a CDN in front of a King''s origin: the repository software, the hosting and the OAI implementation
    are Elsevier Pure''s. The records, the adminEmail puresupport@kcl.ac.uk and the 50-year publication history are King''s.'
  description: 'The standards-based harvesting interface for the King''s Research Portal, the front end of Pure — how King''s
    research outputs reach OpenAIRE, CORE, BASE and the rest of the aggregator layer. Identify returns repositoryName "Pure
    OAI Repository", protocolVersion 2.0, earliestDatestamp 2014-10-22, granularity to the second and deletedRecord no. ListMetadataFormats
    returns six prefixes — oai_dc, qdc, mods, uketd_dc, xmetadiss and nl_didl, the fourth being the UK electronic theses profile.
    ListSets returns persons:all, publications:all, publications:withFiles and a per-year publication set running from 1972.
    The envelope declares the OpenAIRE CERIF 1.2 profile. Fully open, no credential. A legacy path at /ws/OAIHandler answers
    405; the canonical base URL is /ws/oai. No OpenAPI is saved: the protocol is OAI''s and the implementation is Elsevier''s.'
  humanURL: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/explore/kings-research-portal
  baseURL: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai
  tags:
  - Research
  - OAI-PMH
  - Institutional Repository
  - Metadata Harvesting
  - Pure
  properties:
  - type: APIReference
    url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=Identify
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html
  - type: Website
    url: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/kings-college-london-education-standards.yml
- aid: kings-college-london:figshare-repository
  name: King's College London Research Data Repository (Figshare tenancy)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: 'kcl.figshare.com is a CNAME straight to figshare.com. This is the relationship the June 2026 profile
    mistook for a King''s API: ten OpenAPI contracts and eleven apis[] entries were saved here for api.figshare.com/v2, the
    generic Figshare host that twenty-five universities in this catalog claimed simultaneously, and all eleven were removed
    on 2026-08-19. The tenancy itself is recorded because it is real and it is King''s: DataCite provider HCBR, repository
    BL.KCL, prefix 10.18742, 1,118 DOIs published with publisher "King''s College London" and landing pages on kcl.figshare.com.'
  description: King's research data repository, operated for King's by Figshare. The data, the DOIs, the DataCite membership
    and the curation decisions are King's; the REST API, the OAI-PMH endpoint and every line of the contract that describes
    them are Figshare's, and they score against Figshare's own repo, not this one. Recorded as a relationship rather than
    as a set of contracts — the deliberate output of the operator check, and the reason this profile's Kin Score falls relative
    to its June 2026 value.
  humanURL: https://kcl.figshare.com/
  tags:
  - Research Data
  - Institutional Repository
  - Open Data
  - DataCite
  - Figshare
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://kcl.figshare.com/
  - type: x-datacite-provider
    url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/hcbr
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/kings-college-london-education-standards.yml
- aid: kings-college-london:uk-federation-idp
  name: King's UK Access Management Federation / eduGAIN Identity Provider
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: The entityID https://kclidp.kcl.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth is under kcl.ac.uk and the host resolves to 193.61.202.17,
    but it answers no HTTP request — the entityID is a name, not a service. The metadata's own comment reads "This is a OpenAthens
    IdP for King's College London", and both SingleSignOnService Locations are https://login.openathens.net/saml/{1,2}/sso/kcl.ac.uk/c/ukfed.
    An institution-specific path on a vendor platform is the textbook tenant shape. The registration, the scope, the assurance
    certifications and the contacts are King's own.
  description: King's federated identity, and the surface class this pipeline flags as most often missed. The entity is registered
    in the UK Access Management Federation (uk001282, registered 2010-04-22, registration authority ukfederation.org.uk) and
    exported to eduGAIN, carrying a shibmd:Scope of kcl.ac.uk, signing and encryption keys, SAML 2.0 / SAML 1.1 / urn:mace:shibboleth:1.0
    protocol support, a SIRTFI assurance certification, REFEDS Research and Scholarship entity-category support, a security
    contact at sirtfi@kcl.ac.uk and a technical contact at ade.tayo@kcl.ac.uk. It is not self-service and it is not REST,
    but it is a published, signed, machine-readable interface contract that King's is accountable for. A second registered
    entity, https://kclidpdev.kcl.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth, carries the hide-from-discovery category and is a development deployment
    — not counted as a surface.
  humanURL: https://libanswers.kcl.ac.uk/faq/226697
  baseURL: https://login.openathens.net/saml/2/sso/kcl.ac.uk/c/ukfed
  tags:
  - Identity
  - Identity Federation
  - SSO
  - SAML
  - eduGAIN
  properties:
  - type: x-saml-metadata
    url: https://met.refeds.org/met/entity/https%3A%2F%2Fkclidp.kcl.ac.uk%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ukfederation.org.uk/
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/kings-college-london-authentication.yml
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/kings-college-london-education-standards.yml
- aid: kings-college-london:librarysearch-primo
  name: King's LibrarySearch (Ex Libris Primo)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk is a CNAME to kcl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com -> eu04.primo.exlibrisgroup.com.
    The discovery layer is Ex Libris Primo VE; the King's tenancy is identified by vid=44KCL_INST. King's has been an Ex Libris
    site since adopting Aleph in 1998.
  description: Library discovery for King's, on Ex Libris Primo. GET / returns 200 and redirects to /discovery/search?vid=44KCL_INST:44KCL_INST.
    Recorded as a tenancy because the catalog and the holdings are King's, but the Primo and Alma APIs behind it are Ex Libris's
    product and are documented on developers.exlibrisgroup.com, a host every Ex Libris customer shares. No contract is saved
    here.
  humanURL: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library
  baseURL: https://librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk/discovery/search?vid=44KCL_INST:44KCL_INST
  tags:
  - Library
  - Discovery
  - Primo
  - Ex Libris
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library
- aid: kings-college-london:keats-moodle
  name: KEATS Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle) web services
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: keats.kcl.ac.uk is a CNAME to kcl-vle.bloom.ulcc.ac.uk -> kcl-vle-cluster.kcl.cdl.cosector.com. The
    VLE is Moodle, hosted and operated by ULCC/Cosector. The courses and the enrolments are King's.
  description: 'King''s VLE exposes the standard Moodle machine interfaces on a King''s hostname: /webservice/rest/server.php
    answers 200 with an XML `invalidtoken` fault, /lib/ajax/service.php answers 200 with a JSON error envelope, and the LTI
    authorization endpoint /mod/lti/auth.php answers 200. There is no LTI 1.3 platform JWKS and no OIDC discovery document
    — /.well-known/openid-configuration returns 404 — so LTI conformance is recorded as partial. Recorded because it is a
    live, tokenised API surface under kcl.ac.uk, not because King''s authored any of it.'
  humanURL: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/
  baseURL: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/webservice/rest/server.php
  tags:
  - Learning Management
  - Moodle
  - LTI
  - Education Technology
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/kings-college-london-education-standards.yml
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/kcl-eresearch
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/king's-college-london/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/
- type: Support
  url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/getting_help/
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/terms
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/terms/privacy
- type: IdentityFederation
  url: https://met.refeds.org/met/entity/https%3A%2F%2Fkclidp.kcl.ac.uk%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://kcl.figshare.com/
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://librarysearch.kcl.ac.uk/
- type: CourseCatalog
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/cloud/cloud_overview/
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strategy/learning-and-teaching/ai-guidance
- type: AITooling
  url: https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/ai_hub/
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/kings-college-london-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
  url: errors/kings-college-london-problem-types.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/kings-college-london-education-standards.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/kings-college-london-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/kings-college-london-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/kings-college-london-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/kings-college-london-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com