McMaster University

aid: mcmaster
name: McMaster University
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'McMaster University is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Its programmable footprint
  is small but genuinely its own, and it is larger than a June 2026 pass concluded. McMaster operates an undocumented but
  fully public JSON API behind McMaster Experts, its researcher and expertise discovery gateway at experts.mcmaster.ca — a
  bespoke application, not a vendor research-information system — answering anonymously across 7,301 directory records and
  273,828 scholarly works. It self-hosts MacSphere, a DSpace 8.2 institutional repository of 26,361 items with a conformant
  OAI-PMH 2.0 interface on its own domain. It operates its own Shibboleth Identity Provider, published into eduGAIN through
  the Canadian Access Federation, which is the strongest machine-readable surface most universities have and the one this
  cohort was most completely missing. It runs a central Azure API Management developer portal at developer.api.mcmaster.ca,
  but that portal is gated behind MacID sign-in and a registration step: neither the API catalog nor the product list can
  be read without an institutional account, so the size of McMaster''s actual internal API estate is unknown from outside.
  Beyond what it operates, McMaster holds real relationships on platforms it does not run — a named collection on the Borealis
  Dataverse, DataCite provider registration, and Crossref membership under McMaster University Library''s own DOI prefix.
  Those are facts about McMaster; the contracts belong to the platforms. McMaster publishes no status page, no llms.txt, no
  security.txt, no API terms of use and no rate-limit statement, and its course catalog exists only as a human surface on
  a Modern Campus deployment with no API.'
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: true
  label: Institution-operated endpoints, partly public and partly gated
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - review
  generated: '2026-09-01'
  method: probed
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: none
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free and anonymous where public; MacID required for the developer portal
  confidence: high
  source:
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-09-01'
  method: probed
position: Producing
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/mcmaster.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/mcmaster/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Canada
- Ontario
- U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities
- Research
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Identity Federation
- Scholarly Communication
- Open Access
- Library
- Course Catalog
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-09-01'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: mcmaster:experts-api
  name: McMaster Experts API
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: Host experts.mcmaster.ca is under McMaster's own registrable domain. The application is bespoke (Next.js
    over Elasticsearch, McMaster-specific macid field and group taxonomy) and matches no vendor RIS — a deliberate probe of
    the Elsevier Pure path /ws/api returns 404.
  description: 'Public, unauthenticated JSON API behind McMaster Experts, the university''s researcher and expertise discovery
    gateway. Three operations confirmed by live probe on 2026-09-01: a cross-entity keyword search over people, groups, labels
    and publications; a directory listing of 7,301 people filterable by free text, group and sort order; and a listing of
    273,828 scholarly works filterable by free text and date order. Undocumented by McMaster — no developer portal entry,
    no OpenAPI, no terms, no published rate limit. The contract in this repository was written by probing, not from documentation.
    The people endpoint returns personal data including the MacID institutional login identifier; see review.yml.'
  humanURL: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/
  baseURL: https://experts.mcmaster.ca
  tags:
  - Research
  - Expertise Discovery
  - Scholarly Communication
  - Publications
  - Directory
  - JSON
  - Personal Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/mcmaster-experts-openapi.yml
  - type: OpenAPIOriginal
    url: openapi/_original/mcmaster-experts-openapi.yml
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/mcmaster-experts-schemas.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/mcmaster-experts-examples.yml
  - type: Rules
    url: rules/mcmaster-experts-rules.yml
  - type: JSONLD
    url: json-ld/mcmaster-experts-context.jsonld
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/mcmaster-authentication.yml
  - type: Errors
    url: errors/mcmaster-errors.yml
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/mcmaster-lifecycle.yml
  - type: Website
    url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/about
- aid: mcmaster:macsphere
  name: MacSphere Institutional Repository
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: macsphere.mcmaster.ca resolves to prod-ms-be.lib.mcmaster.ca — both under mcmaster.ca. The repository
    is self-hosted by McMaster University Libraries, not a hosted vendor tenancy.
  description: 'McMaster University Libraries'' institutional repository of theses, dissertations and open-access research
    outputs. DSpace 8.2, self-hosted, holding 26,361 items with an earliest datestamp of 2014-06-17. Exposes a conformant
    OAI-PMH 2.0 interface offering twelve metadata formats (oai_dc, qdc, dim, mods, mets, didl, ore, xoai, rdf, marc, rioxx,
    uketd_dc) and the DSpace REST API for anonymous read.


    NO CONTRACT IS SAVED FOR THIS SURFACE, deliberately. McMaster runs the deployment, but the REST API is DSpace''s generic
    contract shipped by every DSpace institution; saving it here would credit McMaster with DSpace''s engineering. The deployment
    is the institutional fact and that is what is recorded.'
  humanURL: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/
  baseURL: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/server/oai/request
  tags:
  - Library
  - OAI-PMH
  - DSpace
  - Open Access
  - Institutional Repository
  - Metadata
  - Theses
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://library.mcmaster.ca/research/getting-started-macsphere
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml
  - type: Website
    url: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/
- aid: mcmaster:shibboleth-idp
  name: McMaster University Shibboleth Identity Provider
  x-operator: federation
  x-operator-evidence: entityID https://sso.mcmaster.ca/idp/shibboleth, shibmd:Scope mcmaster.ca, registration authority http://www.canarie.ca
    (Canadian Access Federation), published into eduGAIN and first seen there 2017-11-28. A federation is shared by definition;
    the IdP behind it is McMaster's.
  description: McMaster's own SAML 2.0 Identity Provider, the authentication authority behind MacID. Publishes machine-readable
    SAML metadata anonymously at its entityID, carrying an IDPSSODescriptor, an AttributeAuthorityDescriptor, a UIInfo display
    name and description, and the scope mcmaster.ca that bounds every scoped attribute the IdP may assert. Registered in the
    Canadian Access Federation by CANARIE and republished into eduGAIN, with SIRTFI asserted. This is an institution-operated,
    standards-conformant, machine-readable surface, and it satisfies both the shibboleth and saml domain standards of the
    Kin Score education regime.
  humanURL: https://uts.mcmaster.ca/
  baseURL: https://sso.mcmaster.ca/idp/shibboleth
  tags:
  - Identity Federation
  - Shibboleth
  - SAML
  - eduGAIN
  - Canadian Access Federation
  - Single Sign-On
  properties:
  - type: IdentityFederation
    url: https://sso.mcmaster.ca/idp/shibboleth
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/mcmaster-authentication.yml
  - type: Scopes
    url: scopes/mcmaster-scopes.yml
- aid: mcmaster:developer-portal
  name: McMaster API Service Developer Portal
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: developer.api.mcmaster.ca is under McMaster's own registrable domain.
  description: Central API management developer portal operated by University Technology Services, running on Azure API Management.
    Both /apis and /products redirect to /signin, so neither the API catalog nor the product list is readable anonymously;
    access requires a MacID plus a registration step. No anonymous OpenAPI, no public product names, no published terms or
    rate limits. McMaster demonstrably runs an internal API estate here; its size and shape cannot be measured from outside,
    and nothing about it is claimed in this repository.
  humanURL: https://developer.api.mcmaster.ca/
  tags:
  - Developer Portal
  - API Management
  - Azure
  - Gated
  - Authentication
  properties:
  - type: DeveloperPortal
    url: https://developer.api.mcmaster.ca/
  - type: Signup
    url: https://developer.api.mcmaster.ca/
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/mcmaster-authentication.yml
- aid: mcmaster:borealis-dataverse
  name: McMaster University Dataverse on Borealis
  x-operator: tenant
  x-operator-evidence: Named collection alias `mcmaster` (id 41126, "McMaster University Dataverse", affiliation McMaster
    University) on borealisdata.ca, operated by Scholars Portal for the Ontario Council of University Libraries. The collection
    is McMaster's; the Dataverse host and its API are not.
  description: 'McMaster''s research data repository, a named collection on the Borealis Canadian Dataverse Repository holding
    sub-collections including the McMaster Research Data Repository, the McMaster University Weather Station Dataverse and
    the McMaster Applied Geophysics Group Dataverse. Recorded as a tenancy: the data and the collection are McMaster''s, the
    platform and its API contract belong to Borealis. No Dataverse contract is saved under this institution.'
  humanURL: https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/mcmaster
  tags:
  - Research Data
  - Dataverse
  - Borealis
  - Scholars Portal
  - Tenancy
  - Open Data
  properties:
  - type: ResearchRepository
    url: https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/mcmaster
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://library.mcmaster.ca/services/rdm
- aid: mcmaster:datacite
  name: McMaster University DataCite Registration
  x-operator: registry
  x-operator-evidence: DataCite provider id `mcmaster`, name "McMaster University", memberType consortium_organization, country
    CA, rorId https://ror.org/02fa3aq29. McMaster is registered in DataCite; the DataCite API is DataCite's contract.
  description: McMaster University's membership of DataCite as a consortium organisation within the Canadian DataCite consortium,
    giving it the ability to mint DOIs for research outputs and datasets. Recorded as a registry membership — a fact about
    McMaster. The registry's own contract is never saved here, and this entry is never removed to tidy up a shared host. The
    DataCite Commons page for ROR 02fa3aq29 is the natural human URL but returns a persistent 429 to non-browser clients,
    so datacite.org is used instead and the provider record is evidenced through the API in conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml.
  humanURL: https://datacite.org/
  tags:
  - DataCite
  - DOI
  - Persistent Identifiers
  - Registry Membership
  - Research Data
  properties:
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml
- aid: mcmaster:crossref
  name: McMaster University Library Crossref Membership
  x-operator: registry
  x-operator-evidence: Crossref member 5872, primary name "McMaster University Library", DOI prefix 10.15173, 3,018 DOIs registered
    as of 2026-09-01. McMaster Undergraduate Research Journal is a separate member, 5874.
  description: McMaster University Library's Crossref membership, under which it mints DOIs on its own prefix 10.15173 for
    library-published scholarship. A publication record in the McMaster Experts API bearing this prefix was minted under McMaster's
    own membership rather than a commercial publisher's. Recorded as a registry membership; the Crossref API is Crossref's
    contract.
  humanURL: https://www.crossref.org/
  tags:
  - Crossref
  - DOI
  - Persistent Identifiers
  - Registry Membership
  - Scholarly Communication
  properties:
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml
- aid: mcmaster:ror
  name: McMaster University ROR Registration
  x-operator: registry
  x-operator-evidence: ROR ID https://ror.org/02fa3aq29, display name "McMaster University".
  description: McMaster University's entry in the Research Organization Registry, the persistent identifier that links the
    institution across DataCite, Crossref and the wider scholarly infrastructure. Distinct ROR records exist for McMaster
    University Medical Centre, McMaster Children's Hospital and McMaster Divinity College, which are separate legal entities
    and are not folded into this profile. Recorded as a registry membership; the ROR API is ROR's contract.
  humanURL: https://ror.org/02fa3aq29
  tags:
  - ROR
  - Persistent Identifiers
  - Registry Membership
  - Research Organization
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.mcmaster.ca/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://developer.api.mcmaster.ca/
- type: APIReference
  url: openapi/mcmaster-experts-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/mcmaster-experts-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/mcmaster-experts-schemas.json
- type: Examples
  url: examples/mcmaster-experts-examples.yml
- type: Rules
  url: rules/mcmaster-experts-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/mcmaster-vocabulary.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/mcmaster-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
  url: scopes/mcmaster-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
  url: errors/mcmaster-errors.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/mcmaster-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/mcmaster-lifecycle.yml
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/
- type: IdentityFederation
  url: https://sso.mcmaster.ca/idp/shibboleth
- type: CourseCatalog
  url: https://academiccalendars.romcmaster.ca/
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://research.mcmaster.ca/home/support-for-researchers/research-resources/mcmaster-it/rhpcs/
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://provost.mcmaster.ca/generative-artificial-intelligence-2/generative-ai-and-academic-integrity/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://secretariat.mcmaster.ca/privacy/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/McMasterRS
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://ca.linkedin.com/school/mcmaster-university/
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/mcmaster-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/mcmaster-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/mcmaster-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/mcmaster-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/mcmaster-context.jsonld
x-coverage:
  state: covered
  reason: covered
  detail: 'McMaster operates a real, public, institution-owned API surface. experts.mcmaster.ca answers anonymously across
    three confirmed operations and is documented here from live probes; MacSphere is a self-hosted DSpace 8.2 repository with
    conformant OAI-PMH on McMaster''s own domain; and sso.mcmaster.ca publishes McMaster''s own Shibboleth IdP metadata into
    the Canadian Access Federation and eduGAIN. Five of the twelve education-regime domain standards are met with live evidence:
    oai-pmh, shibboleth, saml, datacite and crossref.


    Coverage is not complete, and the reason is McMaster''s rather than ours. The central Azure API Management portal at developer.api.mcmaster.ca
    gates both its API catalog and its product list behind MacID sign-in, so an internal API estate demonstrably exists and
    cannot be measured from outside. The Experts API is undocumented — no OpenAPI, no terms, no rate limit, and a bad parameter
    returns 500 rather than 400. The course catalog runs on a Modern Campus deployment with no API. No status page, llms.txt
    or security.txt exists; the three URLs that appeared to serve them all resolve to a homepage.'
  generated: '2026-09-01'
  method: probed
  evidence:
  - url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/api/search?q=nursing
    status: 200
  - url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/api/people
    status: 200
  - url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/api/publications
    status: 200
  - url: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/server/api
    status: 200
  - url: https://sso.mcmaster.ca/idp/shibboleth
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/mcmaster
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.crossref.org/members/5872
    status: 200
  - url: https://borealisdata.ca/api/dataverses/mcmaster
    status: 200
  - url: https://developer.api.mcmaster.ca/apis
    status: 200
  - url: https://uts.mcmaster.ca/status/
    status: 302
  - url: https://www.mcmaster.ca/llms.txt
    status: 200
x-enrichment:
  pipeline: university
  contract: 0-working/pipeline-university.md
  generated: '2026-09-01'
  method: probed
  note: Re-profiled with the operator axis settled before any contract was saved. One contract saved (institution-operated,
    probed). No vendor contract saved and none removed — the audit found no vendor, hostless, shared-contract or misbased
    surface in this repo to correct.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com