The University of Edinburgh is a public research university in Scotland, founded in 1582, a member of the Russell Group and ranked #19 in the QS World University Rankings. Its programmable footprint is real but narrow, and it is not where the catalog previously said it was. Re-profiled on 2026-08-19 against the operator axis, the institution genuinely operates: two DSpace 8.3 research repositories on its own domain (Edinburgh DataShare and the Edinburgh Research Archive) each with a REST API and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint minting DataCite DOIs under the University prefix 10.7488; a Shibboleth Identity Provider publishing SAML 2.0 metadata unauthenticated; a CKAN 2.11.3 open-data catalogue for the Edinburgh International Data Facility; and ELM (Edinburgh Language Models), an OpenAI-compatible generative-AI gateway that EDINA operates for UK tertiary education — the one surface here where Edinburgh is clearly a producer rather than a buyer. An Enterprise API programme runs on a WSO2 Choreo gateway at api.ed.ac.uk, which is live but exposes no public route, catalogue or developer portal, and whose own public project pages returned HTTP 500 on every probe. The library discovery layer (Ex Libris Primo) and the research information system (Elsevier Pure) are vendor platforms recorded here as tenant relationships, not as Edinburgh contracts. This profile is deliberately smaller than the June 2026 one: the seven OpenAPI documents previously held for this institution described the DSpace 6 legacy /rest API, which is retired and now returns 404.
University of Edinburgh publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network, including ELM — Edinburgh Language Models API, Catalogue API, OAI PMH API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, United Kingdom, and Scotland.
The University of Edinburgh catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.
University of Edinburgh’s developer surface includes documentation, GitHub presence, support, engineering blog, authentication, and 25 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 applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it
carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts
themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already
holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in
front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created.
Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet,
not penalised by it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
OpenAI-compatible generative-AI gateway built and run by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, described by its own metadata as delivering generative AI to UK tertiary education...
The University's Enterprise APIs programme — Student Records, Timetabling and Staff APIs — runs on a WSO2 Choreo gateway at api.ed.ac.uk. The gateway is live and Edinburgh-opera...
Edinburgh Research Explorer is the University's public research information portal, running on Elsevier Pure. The research outputs, the people and the DOIs are Edinburgh's; the ...
DiscoverEd is the University Library's discovery layer, an Ex Libris Primo tenancy on an Edinburgh subdomain. The holdings are Edinburgh's; the search API is Ex Libris's product...
aid: university-of-edinburgh
name: University of Edinburgh
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'The University of Edinburgh is a public research university in Scotland, founded in 1582, a member of the Russell
Group and ranked #19 in the QS World University Rankings. Its programmable footprint is real but narrow, and it is not where
the catalog previously said it was. Re-profiled on 2026-08-19 against the operator axis, the institution genuinely operates:
two DSpace 8.3 research repositories on its own domain (Edinburgh DataShare and the Edinburgh Research Archive) each with
a REST API and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint minting DataCite DOIs under the University prefix 10.7488; a Shibboleth Identity
Provider publishing SAML 2.0 metadata unauthenticated; a CKAN 2.11.3 open-data catalogue for the Edinburgh International
Data Facility; and ELM (Edinburgh Language Models), an OpenAI-compatible generative-AI gateway that EDINA operates for UK
tertiary education — the one surface here where Edinburgh is clearly a producer rather than a buyer. An Enterprise API programme
runs on a WSO2 Choreo gateway at api.ed.ac.uk, which is live but exposes no public route, catalogue or developer portal,
and whose own public project pages returned HTTP 500 on every probe. The library discovery layer (Ex Libris Primo) and the
research information system (Elsevier Pure) are vendor platforms recorded here as tenant relationships, not as Edinburgh
contracts. This profile is deliberately smaller than the June 2026 one: the seven OpenAPI documents previously held for
this institution described the DSpace 6 legacy /rest API, which is retired and now returns 404.'
type: Index
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: false
commercial: true
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: high
source:
- openapi
- pricing
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: none
trial: false
try_now: false
public: true
label: Free
confidence: high
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
position: Producing
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-edinburgh.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-edinburgh/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- United Kingdom
- Scotland
- Russell Group
- Research Repository
- Open Data
- Identity Federation
- Research Computing
- OAI-PMH
- Artificial Intelligence
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: institution_operates_narrow_public_surface
detail: 'Every surface class in the university playbook was hunted on 2026-08-19 and the result is a small but genuine institution-operated
footprint, plus two tenant relationships and one live-but-gated gateway. What was found: research repositories (institution,
DSpace 8.3 on ed.ac.uk), OAI-PMH (institution, both repositories), identity federation (institution, Shibboleth SAML metadata
at idp.ed.ac.uk), open data (institution, CKAN at catalogue.eidf.ac.uk on an Edinburgh-owned domain), AI tooling (institution,
ELM on edina.ac.uk, OpenAI-compatible and bearer-authenticated), research computing (institution, EPCC/EIDF portal). What
was NOT found: no course catalog or timetable API — the Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study site is HTML only;
no campus-life API of any kind; no SCIM, LTI, OneRoster, Ed-Fi, Caliper or QTI surface; no llms.txt and no security.txt
on the main domain. What is gated: the Enterprise API gateway at api.ed.ac.uk, which resolves to a WSO2 Choreo tenant
named `uoe` and answers every probed path with its own JSON 404 envelope. This is not a thin profile caused by our own
visibility limits — the probes ran clean and the absences are the institution''s, not ours.'
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
evidence:
- url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/server/api
status: 200
- url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/server/api
status: 200
- url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://idp.ed.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
- url: https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk/api/3/action/status_show
status: 200
- url: https://elm.edina.ac.uk/api/v1/models
status: 401
- url: https://api.ed.ac.uk/openapi
status: 404
- url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/rest
status: 404
- url: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=Identify
status: 500
- url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/digital-transformation/current-programmes-projects/enterprise-apis
status: 500
- url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/llms.txt
status: 404
- url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/.well-known/security.txt
status: 404
apis:
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:elm-api
name: ELM — Edinburgh Language Models API
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: 'edina.ac.uk Nominet Domain Owner: University of Edinburgh, Registered For: EDINA National Data Centre'
description: OpenAI-compatible generative-AI gateway built and run by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, described by
its own metadata as delivering generative AI to UK tertiary education. /api/v1/models and /api/v1/chat/completions both
answer 401 with an OpenAI-shaped error envelope without a bearer token, which is what establishes the routes and the auth
scheme; /health returns 200. No public self-service registration and no published OpenAPI (/openapi.json returns the SPA
shell). This is the clearest case in the profile of Edinburgh acting as an API producer rather than a buyer.
humanURL: https://information-services.ed.ac.uk/computing/comms-and-collab/elm
baseURL: https://elm.edina.ac.uk/api/v1
tags:
- Artificial Intelligence
- LLM
- Gateway
- Gated
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-edinburgh-elm-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://information-services.ed.ac.uk/computing/comms-and-collab/elm
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-edinburgh-errors.yml
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:identity-federation
name: University of Edinburgh Shibboleth Identity Provider
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: idp.ed.ac.uk is under ed.ac.uk; metadata OrganizationName is "University of Edinburgh"
description: Shibboleth Identity Provider publishing SAML 2.0 entity metadata unauthenticated at a stable URL, entityID
https://idp.ed.ac.uk/shibboleth. Advertises the full SAML 2.0 binding set for SSO and Single Logout plus SAML 1 artifact
resolution and attribute query. Institution-operated by definition and machine-readable. Note the IdP web root returns
403 by design — the metadata path is the machine surface and it answers 200.
humanURL: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/computing/computing-infrastructure/authentication-authorisation
baseURL: https://idp.ed.ac.uk/idp
tags:
- Identity Federation
- SAML
- Shibboleth
- Authentication
properties:
- type: x-metadata
url: https://idp.ed.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-edinburgh-conformance.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:enterprise-api-gateway
name: Enterprise API Gateway (gated)
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: api.ed.ac.uk is under ed.ac.uk and resolves to a WSO2 Choreo tenant named uoe (f5aad5f4-...-prod.prod.uoe.choreoapis.dev)
description: The University's Enterprise APIs programme — Student Records, Timetabling and Staff APIs — runs on a WSO2 Choreo
gateway at api.ed.ac.uk. The gateway is live and Edinburgh-operated, but every probed path returns its own JSON 404 envelope,
including /openapi, /api-docs, /services and /.well-known/openid-configuration. No route, no catalogue, no developer portal,
no scopes. Recorded as a gated surface rather than an absent one. The programme's own public project pages returned HTTP
500 on both digital-strategy.ed.ac.uk and www.ed.ac.uk when probed on 2026-08-19, so the institution's public account
of its API programme is currently broken.
humanURL: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/enterprise-architecture/application-integration/apis-and-connectors
baseURL: https://api.ed.ac.uk
tags:
- Enterprise
- Integration
- Gated
- Internal
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/enterprise-architecture/application-integration/apis-and-connectors
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/university-of-edinburgh-scopes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-edinburgh-lifecycle.yml
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:pure-research-explorer
name: Edinburgh Research Explorer (Elsevier Pure) — tenant
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: www.pure.ed.ac.uk is an Edinburgh-branded subdomain running Elsevier Pure; https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/api
canonicalises to https://api.elsevierpure.com/ws/api/index.html, so the contract is Elsevier's and is not saved under
this institution.
description: Edinburgh Research Explorer is the University's public research information portal, running on Elsevier Pure.
The research outputs, the people and the DOIs are Edinburgh's; the API contract is Elsevier's and belongs on Elsevier's
own record. Recorded here as a real tenant relationship rather than deleted or credited. The Pure OAI-PMH endpoint returned
HTTP 500 on both www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/oai and www.research.ed.ac.uk/ws/oai when probed on 2026-08-19, so the harvesting
surface is currently broken; the previous dead pointer to it has been removed.
humanURL: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/
tags:
- Research Outputs
- CRIS
- Tenant
- Vendor Platform
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:discovered-primo
name: DiscoverEd Library Discovery (Ex Libris Primo) — tenant
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: discovered.ed.ac.uk serves an Ex Libris Primo application (primoExploreRoot); the Primo API contract
is Ex Libris's and shared across every Primo customer
description: DiscoverEd is the University Library's discovery layer, an Ex Libris Primo tenancy on an Edinburgh subdomain.
The holdings are Edinburgh's; the search API is Ex Libris's product and is not saved under this institution.
humanURL: https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/
tags:
- Library
- Discovery
- Tenant
- Vendor Platform
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:university-of-edinburgh-catalogue-api
name: University of Edinburgh Catalogue API
description: Read actions on the EIDF Data Catalogue
humanURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/
baseURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/server/api
tags:
- Catalogue
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-edinburgh-catalogue-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/research-data-service
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-dspace-community-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-datashare-communities-example.json
- type: x-spectral-rules
url: rules/university-of-edinburgh-rules.yml
- type: x-vocabulary
url: vocabulary/university-of-edinburgh-vocabulary.yml
- type: x-json-ld-context
url: json-ld/university-of-edinburgh-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-edinburgh-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-edinburgh-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-edinburgh-conformance.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-era-communities-example.json
- type: Documentation
url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Documentation
url: https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk/
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-ckan-package-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-eidf-package-show-example.json
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:university-of-edinburgh-oai-pmh-api
name: University of Edinburgh OAI PMH API
description: OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting for Edinburgh DataShare
humanURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/
baseURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/server/api
tags:
- OAI-PMH
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-edinburgh-oai-pmh-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/research-data-service
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-dspace-community-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-datashare-communities-example.json
- type: x-spectral-rules
url: rules/university-of-edinburgh-rules.yml
- type: x-vocabulary
url: vocabulary/university-of-edinburgh-vocabulary.yml
- type: x-json-ld-context
url: json-ld/university-of-edinburgh-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-edinburgh-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-edinburgh-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-edinburgh-conformance.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-era-communities-example.json
- type: Documentation
url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Documentation
url: https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk/
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-ckan-package-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-eidf-package-show-example.json
- aid: university-of-edinburgh:university-of-edinburgh-repository-api
name: University of Edinburgh Repository API
description: Service root, communities, collections and discovery for Edinburgh DataShare
humanURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/
baseURL: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/server/api
tags:
- Repository
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-edinburgh-repository-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/research-data-service
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-dspace-community-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-datashare-communities-example.json
- type: x-spectral-rules
url: rules/university-of-edinburgh-rules.yml
- type: x-vocabulary
url: vocabulary/university-of-edinburgh-vocabulary.yml
- type: x-json-ld-context
url: json-ld/university-of-edinburgh-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-edinburgh-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-edinburgh-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-edinburgh-conformance.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-era-communities-example.json
- type: Documentation
url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Documentation
url: https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk/
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-edinburgh-ckan-package-schema.json
- type: x-examples
url: examples/university-of-edinburgh-eidf-package-show-example.json
common:
- type: CapabilityMap
url: capabilities/university-of-edinburgh-capability-edges.yml
name: University of Edinburgh Business Capability Map
- type: Website
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/
- type: Documentation
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/enterprise-architecture/application-integration/apis-and-connectors
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/uoe-is-apps
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-edinburgh/
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/website/website-terms-conditions
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/data-protection
- type: Support
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy
- type: Blog
url: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/datablog/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://era.ed.ac.uk/
- type: OpenData
url: https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://idp.ed.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://portal.eidf.ac.uk/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://www.ed.ac.uk/ai/guidance
- type: AITooling
url: https://information-services.ed.ac.uk/computing/comms-and-collab/elm
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-edinburgh-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/university-of-edinburgh-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-edinburgh-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-edinburgh-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-edinburgh-conformance.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
url: agentic-access/university-of-edinburgh-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/university-of-edinburgh-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/university-of-edinburgh-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/university-of-edinburgh-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/university-of-edinburgh-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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