University of Cape Town

aid: university-of-cape-town
name: University of Cape Town
description: 'The University of Cape Town (UCT) is South Africa''s leading public research university, ranked #96 in the QS
  World University Rankings 2025 and the highest-ranked university on the African continent. UCT does not operate a single
  consolidated developer portal, but several of its research and library units expose public, machine-readable interfaces.
  DataFirst runs a NADA-based microdata catalog with a public REST API, the OpenUCT institutional repository exposes a DSpace
  OAI-PMH metadata harvesting endpoint, and the ZivaHub open data repository is built on Figshare for Institutions and is
  reachable through the public Figshare API. Most operational, student-information, and identity systems remain gated behind
  institutional authentication.'
type: Index
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-cape-town/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Institutional Repository
- OAI-PMH
- South Africa
- Africa
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: university-of-cape-town:datafirst-nada
  name: DataFirst Microdata Catalog API (NADA)
  description: DataFirst is a UCT research unit and data service providing online access to survey and administrative microdata
    from South Africa and other African countries. Its open data portal is built on the NADA (National Data Archive) cataloging
    tool, which exposes a public REST/JSON API for browsing the catalog of studies. The catalog endpoint returns survey metadata
    (hundreds of confirmed surveys) in JSON.
  humanURL: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog
  baseURL: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/api
  tags:
  - Microdata
  - Open Data
  - Research Data
  - NADA
  - Catalog
  - Surveys
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/
- aid: university-of-cape-town:openuct-oai-pmh
  name: OpenUCT Institutional Repository OAI-PMH
  description: OpenUCT is the University of Cape Town's open access institutional repository, launched in 2014 and built on
    DSpace. It preserves and openly shares UCT scholarly outputs including theses, dissertations, journal articles, reports,
    and open educational resources. The repository exposes a standards-compliant OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting interface
    supporting verbs such as Identify, ListRecords, and ListMetadataFormats.
  humanURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/
  baseURL: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request
  tags:
  - Institutional Repository
  - OAI-PMH
  - DSpace
  - Metadata
  - Open Access
  - Scholarly
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://open.uct.ac.za/
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
- aid: university-of-cape-town:zivahub-figshare
  name: ZivaHub Open Data (Figshare API)
  description: ZivaHub is UCT's institutional open data repository for research data and scholarly outputs, powered by Figshare
    for Institutions and certified with the CoreTrustSeal in 2025. Public ZivaHub content is accessible programmatically through
    the public Figshare REST API, which provides article, collection, and project metadata in JSON.
  humanURL: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
  baseURL: https://api.figshare.com/v2
  tags:
  - Open Data
  - Research Data
  - Figshare
  - Repository
  - Metadata
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.figshare.com/
  - type: Website
    url: https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.uct.ac.za/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/uct-cbio
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://za.linkedin.com/school/university-of-cape-town/
- type: Plans
  url: plans/university-of-cape-town-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/university-of-cape-town-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/university-of-cape-town-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/university-of-cape-town-zivahub-figshare.yaml
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/university-of-cape-town-datafirst-nada.yaml
- type: x-json-schema
  url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-article-schema.json
- type: x-json-schema
  url: json-schema/university-of-cape-town-study-schema.json
- type: x-json-structure
  url: json-structure/university-of-cape-town-article-structure.json
- type: x-json-structure
  url: json-structure/university-of-cape-town-study-structure.json
- type: x-spectral-rules
  url: rules/university-of-cape-town-rules.yml
- type: x-vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/university-of-cape-town-vocabulary.yml
- type: x-json-ld
  url: json-ld/university-of-cape-town-context.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com