# University of Cambridge **Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/university-of-cambridge/ **Website:** https://www.cam.ac.uk/ **APIs profiled:** 12 The University of Cambridge (founded 1209) is a public collegiate research university and Russell Group member whose programmable footprint is unusually real for a university, and is operated in-house by University Information Services (UIS) rather than bought in. Verified institution-operated surfaces: the Lookup/Ibis directory web service, which publishes a first-party OpenAPI 3.0 document at www.lookup.cam.ac.uk/openapi-3.0.yaml (39 paths, byte-identical to the copy held here); an API Gateway on the University's own domain (api.apps.cam.ac.uk) whose developer portal lists ten published APIs — Lookup, University Card, University Photo, University Student, University Human Resources, OAuth2, Raven device statistics, Institutional identifier mapping, Undergraduate Admissions and Staff On Costs — fronted by a live OpenID Connect discovery document; a Shibboleth SAML 2.0 identity provider publishing signed IdP metadata; the Apollo institutional repository, self-hosted DSpace 8.1 on Cambridge IP space with a DSpace REST API and an OAI-PMH endpoint serving eleven metadata formats and minting DataCite DOIs under prefix 10.17863; and the Cambridge Digital Library IIIF Presentation and Image APIs. Honest limits: only the Lookup contract is published as a downloadable machine-readable spec, every gateway API requires registered client credentials before it will answer, and there is no public status page for the API platform. Library discovery (iDiscover, Ex Libris Primo VE) and the research information system (Symplectic Elements) run under Cambridge subdomains but are vendor platforms — they are recorded here as tenant relationships, not as Cambridge contracts. ## Kin Score — 52.9 / 100 (developing) Scored 2026-08-21 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.5 from 52.4). | Facet | Score | |---|---| | Discoverability | 64.8 | | Contract Quality | 63.1 | | Governance | 31.8 | | Contract Governance | 31.8 | | Operational Transparency | 21.1 | | Developer Ergonomics | 45.2 | | Commercial Clarity | 50.0 | | Access Clarity | 50.0 | Regulatory layer — **Education & Research**: 61.1 (matched via tags). ## Agent readiness — 34.7 (agent-ready) | Dimension | Value | |---|---| | Spec Presence | yes | | Agentic Access | derived | | Reversibility Documented | na | | MCP Server | no | | Auth Clarity | yes | | Idempotency | na | | Error Semantics | no | | OpenAPI Examples | no | | Rate Limit Signal | documented | | Event Surface Described | no | | Agent Skills | no | | Well Known Catalog | no | | Consent Identity | no | | Agent Card | no | | Dry Run Mode | na | ## Access Free · Self-serve signup — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: high). ## APIs (12) - **Raven Authentication (OAuth2 / OpenID Connect)** — The University's central web authentication service. Raven OAuth2 conforms to OpenID Connect; applications register client credentials to authenticate Cambridge users. An identi... - **Cambridge API Gateway (Card / Student / HR)** — UIS API Gateway (ALPHA) publishing read-oriented REST APIs — University Card, University Student (CamSIS-sourced), and University Human Resources (CHRIS-sourced). Interactive "t... - **Apollo Institutional Repository API (DSpace)** — Cambridge's open-access research repository (Apollo) on the DSpace platform, exposing OAI-PMH metadata harvesting and a DSpace REST API. Managed by Cambridge University Library ... - **University of Cambridge group API** — Methods for querying and manipulating groups. #### The fetch parameter for groups All methods that return groups also accept an optional `fetch` parameter that may be used to re... - **University of Cambridge ibis API** — Common methods for searching for objects in the Lookup/Ibis database. - **University of Cambridge institution API** — Methods for querying and manipulating institutions. #### The fetch parameter for institutions All methods that return institutions also accept an optional `fetch` parameter that... - **University of Cambridge person API** — Methods for querying and manipulating people. #### Notes on the fetch parameter All methods that return people, institutions or groups also accept an optional `fetch` parameter ... - **Cambridge Shibboleth Identity Provider (SAML 2.0 metadata)** — The University's Shibboleth identity provider, publishing signed SAML 2.0 IdP metadata at https://shib.raven.cam.ac.uk/shibboleth. The EntityDescriptor carries entityID https://... - **Apollo OAI-PMH metadata harvesting endpoint** — OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting interface for Apollo, the University's institutional repository, served from Cambridge's own host. Identify returns repositoryName "Apollo - University of... - **Cambridge Digital Library IIIF APIs** — The Cambridge University Library digital collections platform exposes IIIF Presentation API 2.1 manifests at cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/ and IIIF Image API 2.1 endpoints a... - **iDiscover library discovery (Ex Libris Primo VE) — TENANT** — Cambridge's library discovery layer runs on Ex Libris Primo VE. idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk is a CNAME to cam.primo.exlibrisgroup.com -> eu00.primo.exlibrisgroup.com, and the landin... - **Symplectic Elements research information system — TENANT** — Cambridge's current research information system (CRIS) is Symplectic Elements, reached at elements.admin.cam.ac.uk. The host sits under cam.ac.uk but resolves via CNAME to cam.e... ## Agentic access (1) - **University Of Cambridge Agentic Access** — 39 operations ## Security (2) - **University Of Cambridge Authentication** — http/oauth2/openIdConnect/saml · 3 schemes - **University Of Cambridge Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC ## Plans (1) - **University Of Cambridge Plans Pricing** ## Tags Education, Higher Education, University, Research, United Kingdom, Russell Group, Identity, Identity Federation, API Gateway, Developer Portal, Research Data, Open Access, Research Repository, Library, Digital Collections --- Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/university-of-cambridge/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.