Rice University is a private research university in Houston, Texas. Its programmable footprint is small, and most of what appears to be Rice's is not: the Rice Research Repository at repository.rice.edu is a CNAME to rice.dspacedirect.org and runs on DSpaceDirect, the Lyrasis-hosted DSpace service, so its REST and OAI-PMH contracts are the platform's engineering on Rice's content, recorded here as a tenancy rather than credited to Rice. What Rice genuinely operates is three things. It runs its own Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 identity provider at idp.rice.edu, on Rice's own ARIN allocation behind an InCommon-issued certificate, and registers it in the InCommon federation — the strongest machine-readable contract on Rice's public surface. It is a direct DataCite member (symbol RICE, eight prefixes, 2,169 DOIs) through Fondren Library. And its Kinder Institute for Urban Research operates the Urban Data Platform, a genuinely public, unauthenticated JSON API serving a 431-dataset Houston-region urban data catalog with its own controlled vocabularies and DataCite DOIs — undocumented, unadvertised, and the only self-operated callable API Rice has. There is no central developer portal, no llms.txt, no .well-known catalog, and the official RiceUniversity GitHub organization has zero public repositories; Rice's Center for Research Computing publishes separately at github.com/rice-crc.
Rice University publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network: Rice Kinder Institute Urban Data Platform API. Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, United States, and Texas.
The Rice University catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context.
Rice University’s developer surface includes API reference, GitHub presence, authentication, support, status page, and 18 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 does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare
no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's
denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to
upsert.
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/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/rice: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts.
Submit an artifact on GitHub — free →Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →
The only publicly callable API Rice University itself operates. Serves the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's Urban Data Platform: a 431-dataset catalog of Houston and Harris...
Rice University's own Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 identity provider, publishing a live EntityDescriptor with an IDPSSODescriptor, a shibmd:Scope of rice.edu and support for SAML 1.1, SA...
Rice's identity provider is registered in InCommon, the US research and education identity federation, and InCommon's metadata query service returns a signed EntityDescriptor fo...
Rice University is a DataCite direct member, registered 2017-11-13 as provider `rice` (symbol RICE) under Fondren Library and linked to ROR https://ror.org/008zs3103. The member...
Rice University's entry in the Research Organization Registry, ROR ID https://ror.org/008zs3103. It is the identifier DataCite's member record for Fondren Library points at, and...
Rice's public course catalog and schedule search, served from courses.rice.edu on Rice's own network (128.42.207.157, RICENET). It is an Ellucian Banner self-service interface (...
The Rice Research Repository (R-3) is Fondren Library's institutional repository, holding Rice theses, dissertations and scholarship back to 2005 and minting DOIs on Rice's own ...
OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint for the Rice Research Repository. Identify returns repositoryName "Rice Research Repository", repositoryIdentifier repository.rice.edu, adminEmai...
aid: rice
name: Rice University
x-type: university
x-category: Private Research University
description: 'Rice University is a private research university in Houston, Texas. Its programmable footprint is small, and
most of what appears to be Rice''s is not: the Rice Research Repository at repository.rice.edu is a CNAME to rice.dspacedirect.org
and runs on DSpaceDirect, the Lyrasis-hosted DSpace service, so its REST and OAI-PMH contracts are the platform''s engineering
on Rice''s content, recorded here as a tenancy rather than credited to Rice. What Rice genuinely operates is three things.
It runs its own Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 identity provider at idp.rice.edu, on Rice''s own ARIN allocation behind an InCommon-issued
certificate, and registers it in the InCommon federation — the strongest machine-readable contract on Rice''s public surface.
It is a direct DataCite member (symbol RICE, eight prefixes, 2,169 DOIs) through Fondren Library. And its Kinder Institute
for Urban Research operates the Urban Data Platform, a genuinely public, unauthenticated JSON API serving a 431-dataset
Houston-region urban data catalog with its own controlled vocabularies and DataCite DOIs — undocumented, unadvertised, and
the only self-operated callable API Rice has. There is no central developer portal, no llms.txt, no .well-known catalog,
and the official RiceUniversity GitHub organization has zero public repositories; Rice''s Center for Research Computing
publishes separately at github.com/rice-crc.'
type: Index
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: medium
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: true
label: Free
confidence: medium
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/rice.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rice/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- United States
- Texas
- Private Research University
- Association of American Universities
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Research Repository
- Course Catalog
- Identity Federation
- Library
- Urban Research
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-09-01'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: covered
detail: 'Rice''s public surface was probed end to end on 2026-09-01 and one genuinely institution-operated, publicly callable
API was found and described: the Kinder Institute Urban Data Platform. Operator was settled by DNS, ARIN and TLS resolution
rather than by hostname, which changed the answer in both directions — it promoted the Kinder platform (an AWS host, no
rice.edu name, but Rice''s own engineering, endorsed from kinder.rice.edu and minting DOIs on Rice''s DataCite prefix)
and it demoted the research repository (a rice.edu name, but a DSpaceDirect/Lyrasis tenancy). Rice publishes no developer
portal, no OpenAPI, no llms.txt and no .well-known catalog, and its official GitHub organization is empty; the OpenAPI
in this repo is ours, written from live probes and marked as such.'
evidence:
- url: https://lg4tooqkr1.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/prod/datasets
status: 200
note: 431-dataset public catalog, unauthenticated, access-control-allow-origin *.
- url: https://lg4tooqkr1.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/prod/lookups
status: 200
note: 27 controlled vocabularies served by the platform itself.
- url: https://idp.rice.edu/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
note: SAML 2.0 EntityDescriptor on Rice's own ARIN allocation (128.42.207.19, RICENET).
- url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/%7Bsha1%7D6353fefaff3eca405b039ff0391042ae469fc046
status: 200
note: InCommon-signed metadata, registrationAuthority https://incommon.org.
- url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/rice
status: 200
note: 'DataCite direct member: Fondren Library, Rice University; ROR https://ror.org/008zs3103.'
- url: https://repository.rice.edu/server/api
status: 200
note: DSpace 9.3 HAL root. Host CNAMEs to rice.dspacedirect.org and shares dspacedirect.org's three IPs — tenant, not
institution.
- url: https://repository.rice.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
note: OAI-PMH 2.0, repositoryName "Rice Research Repository", adminEmail cds@rice.edu.
- url: https://courses.rice.edu/admweb/!SWKSCAT.cat
status: 200
note: Ellucian Banner schedule search on Rice's own host (128.42.207.157, RICENET).
- url: https://api.github.com/orgs/RiceUniversity
status: 200
note: public_repos = 0. The official organization publishes nothing.
- url: https://www.rice.edu/llms.txt
status: 406
note: Absent, not blocked. 406 is this Drupal estate's not-found; robots.txt and sitemap.xml return 200 to the same client.
- url: https://www.rice.edu/.well-known/apis.json
status: 406
note: Absent, same not-found behaviour.
apis:
- aid: rice:kinder-udp
name: Rice Kinder Institute Urban Data Platform API
x-operator: institution
description: 'The only publicly callable API Rice University itself operates. Serves the Kinder Institute for Urban Research''s
Urban Data Platform: a 431-dataset catalog of Houston and Harris County urban data across fourteen subject categories,
with 27 controlled vocabularies, DataCite DOIs under Rice''s own 10.25612 prefix, and typed inter-dataset relations drawn
from the DataCite RelationType vocabulary. Reads are anonymous and CORS-open; a member-scoped catalog sits behind an undocumented
authorizer. Rice publishes no documentation, no OpenAPI and no developer portal for it — the description in this repository
was written from live probes on 2026-09-01 and is marked `method: probed`. Operator is institution despite the AWS hostname:
the API''s own suggestedCitation field names "Rice University-Kinder Institute: UDP", kinder.rice.edu endorses and links
the platform, and its DOIs resolve to DataCite client RICE.KINDER under member `rice`.'
humanURL: https://kinder.rice.edu/initiative/urban-data-platform
baseURL: https://lg4tooqkr1.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/prod
tags:
- Open Data
- Urban Research
- Research Data
- Datasets
- Geospatial
- Houston
- REST
- JSON
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/rice-kinder-udp-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/rice-kinder-udp-dataset-schema.json
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/rice-kinder-udp-vocabulary.yml
- type: Examples
url: examples/rice-kinder-udp-datasets-example.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/rice-kinder-udp-dataset-detail-example.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/rice-kinder-udp-lookups-example.json
- type: Errors
url: errors/rice-errors.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/rice-authentication.yml
- type: Website
url: https://www.kinderudp.org/
- type: Documentation
url: https://kinder.rice.edu/initiative/urban-data-platform
- aid: rice:sso-shibboleth
name: Rice Shibboleth SAML 2.0 Identity Provider
x-operator: institution
description: 'Rice University''s own Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 identity provider, publishing a live EntityDescriptor with an IDPSSODescriptor,
a shibmd:Scope of rice.edu and support for SAML 1.1, SAML 2.0 and the Shibboleth 1.0 protocol. Operator was settled by
infrastructure, not hostname: idp.rice.edu resolves to 128.42.207.19 on Rice''s own RICENET allocation, behind a certificate
issued to William Marsh Rice University by Internet2''s InCommon CA. This is Rice''s engineering and the strongest machine-readable
contract on its public surface.'
humanURL: https://idp.rice.edu/idp/shibboleth
baseURL: https://idp.rice.edu/idp/shibboleth
tags:
- Identity
- SSO
- SAML
- Shibboleth
- Authentication
- Federation
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://idp.rice.edu/idp/shibboleth
- type: IdentityFederation
url: identity-federation/rice-identity-federation.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/rice-authentication.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/rice-education-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: rice:incommon-federation
name: InCommon Federation registration
x-operator: federation
description: Rice's identity provider is registered in InCommon, the US research and education identity federation, and
InCommon's metadata query service returns a signed EntityDescriptor for entityID https://idp.rice.edu/idp/shibboleth with
registrationAuthority https://incommon.org. A federation is shared by definition; the entity inside it is Rice's, and
this membership is what makes Rice's IdP usable by every other InCommon participant. Recorded as a relationship, never
as Rice's contract.
humanURL: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/spaces/federation/overview
baseURL: https://mdq.incommon.org/
tags:
- Identity Federation
- InCommon
- SAML
- Metadata
- Higher Education
properties:
- type: IdentityFederation
url: identity-federation/rice-identity-federation.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/%7Bsha1%7D6353fefaff3eca405b039ff0391042ae469fc046
- aid: rice:datacite
name: DataCite membership — Fondren Library, Rice University
x-operator: registry
description: 'Rice University is a DataCite direct member, registered 2017-11-13 as provider `rice` (symbol RICE) under
Fondren Library and linked to ROR https://ror.org/008zs3103. The membership carries eight DOI prefixes (10.25611 through
10.25618) and 2,169 registered DOIs across three repositories: Fondren Library (rice.fondren), the Kinder Institute Urban
Data Platform (rice.kinder) and the Children''s Environmental Health Initiative (rice.cehi). This is a fact about Rice,
not a Rice contract — DataCite''s own API is never saved here, and the membership is never deleted to tidy a shared host.'
humanURL: https://library.rice.edu/
baseURL: https://api.datacite.org/providers/rice
tags:
- DataCite
- DOI
- Persistent Identifiers
- Registry
- Research Data
- Membership
properties:
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/rice-education-standards-conformance.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/rice
- aid: rice:ror
name: ROR registration — Rice University
x-operator: registry
description: Rice University's entry in the Research Organization Registry, ROR ID https://ror.org/008zs3103. It is the
identifier DataCite's member record for Fondren Library points at, and the canonical machine-readable identity for the
institution across the research-data ecosystem. A registry membership, recorded as a relationship.
humanURL: https://ror.org/008zs3103
baseURL: https://api.ror.org/v2/organizations/008zs3103
tags:
- ROR
- Registry
- Persistent Identifiers
- Research Organization
- Membership
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://ror.org/008zs3103
- aid: rice:course-schedule
name: Rice University Course Schedule
x-operator: institution
description: Rice's public course catalog and schedule search, served from courses.rice.edu on Rice's own network (128.42.207.157,
RICENET). It is an Ellucian Banner self-service interface (SWKSCAT) with a Rice-authored XSL layer, taking term, subject,
department, school, CRN and keyword parameters and returning XHTML carrying a Rice-specific XML namespace (urn:edu.rice.adminsystems.stud…)
rather than JSON. Rice runs the deployment, so the operator is institution — but this is a queryable web interface, not
a documented API, and no contract is claimed for it.
humanURL: https://courses.rice.edu/
baseURL: https://courses.rice.edu/admweb/!SWKSCAT.cat
tags:
- Course Catalog
- Registrar
- Schedule
- Banner
- Education
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://courses.rice.edu/
- type: Errors
url: errors/rice-errors.yml
- aid: rice:repository-rest
name: Rice Research Repository (DSpaceDirect tenancy) — REST API
x-operator: tenant
description: 'The Rice Research Repository (R-3) is Fondren Library''s institutional repository, holding Rice theses, dissertations
and scholarship back to 2005 and minting DOIs on Rice''s own DataCite prefixes. The repository, its content and its curation
are Rice''s. The software and the contract are not: repository.rice.edu is a CNAME to rice.dspacedirect.org and resolves
to the same three addresses as dspacedirect.org, behind a platform-provisioned Let''s Encrypt certificate — it is a DSpaceDirect
(Lyrasis) tenancy running DSpace 9.3. The tenancy is recorded here because it is a real institutional fact; the DSpace
REST contract is deliberately NOT saved under Rice, and belongs to DSpace''s own catalog entry.'
humanURL: https://repository.rice.edu/
baseURL: https://repository.rice.edu/server/api
tags:
- Research Repository
- DSpace
- DSpaceDirect
- Lyrasis
- Library
- Scholarship
- Tenant
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://repository.rice.edu/
- type: Examples
url: examples/rice-repository-dspace-root-example.json
- type: Errors
url: errors/rice-errors.yml
- aid: rice:repository-oai
name: Rice Research Repository (DSpaceDirect tenancy) — OAI-PMH
x-operator: tenant
description: OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint for the Rice Research Repository. Identify returns repositoryName "Rice Research
Repository", repositoryIdentifier repository.rice.edu, adminEmail cds@rice.edu (Rice's Center for Digital Scholarship)
and an earliest datestamp of 2005-07-25; ListMetadataFormats returns thirteen prefixes including oai_dc, etdms, mods,
marc, mets, ore, qdc, rioxx and xoai. The harvestable metadata is Rice's. The OAI-PMH implementation serving it is DSpace's,
on DSpaceDirect infrastructure, so the protocol conformance is recorded as tenant-operated in conformance/ and is not
credited to Rice.
humanURL: https://library.rice.edu/services/sharing-research-data-rice-digital-scholarship-archive
baseURL: https://repository.rice.edu/server/oai/request
tags:
- OAI-PMH
- Metadata
- Harvesting
- Research Repository
- Library
- Tenant
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://repository.rice.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/rice-education-standards-conformance.yml
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.rice.edu/
- type: OpenData
url: https://www.kinderudp.org/
- type: APIReference
url: openapi/rice-kinder-udp-openapi.yml
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://repository.rice.edu/
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://library.rice.edu/
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://courses.rice.edu/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: identity-federation/rice-identity-federation.yml
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://researchcomputing.rice.edu/
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/rice-crc
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/RiceUniversity
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/rice-authentication.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/rice-education-standards-conformance.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/rice-errors.yml
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.rice.edu/privacy
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://policy.rice.edu/808
- type: Support
url: https://kb.rice.edu/
- type: Status
url: https://status.rice.edu/
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/rice-university/
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/rice-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/rice-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/rice-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/rice-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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