University of Groningen

aid: university-of-groningen
name: University of Groningen
description: 'The University of Groningen (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, RUG/UG) is a public research university in Groningen,
  the Netherlands, founded in 1614. Measured honestly, it runs no API programme: there is no developer portal, no api.rug.nl,
  no status page, no published versioning or deprecation policy, and no first-party OpenAPI anywhere on its estate — api.rug.nl,
  data.rug.nl, developer.rug.nl and status.rug.nl do not resolve at all. What it does operate, on its own domain, is a small
  set of real programmable surfaces: the Ocasys course and degree-programme catalog, whose JSON backend at ocasys.rug.nl/api
  answers unauthenticated course search, full course records, programme search, faculties and controlled option lists, and
  emits RFC 9457 problem details on error; a keyless OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint at pure.rug.nl/ws/oai serving 1,521,703 identifiers
  across six metadata profiles including OpenAIRE CERIF 1.2 with resolvable ORCID iDs; and its own SAML 2.0 identity provider
  at signon.rug.nl, registered in eduGAIN through SURFconext. Everything else that looks like a University of Groningen API
  is a purchase. The CRIS is Elsevier Pure, research data lives in a collection inside the shared national DataverseNL installation
  that DANS and SURF operate, and library discovery is OCLC WorldCat. Those are recorded here as tenant relationships, not
  as the University''s engineering.'
type: Index
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: true
  label: Institution-operated endpoints · no commercial API product
  confidence: high
  source:
  - probed
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: none
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free and keyless where public; institutional affiliation where not
  confidence: high
  source:
  - probed
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
position: Consuming
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-groningen.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-groningen/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Netherlands
- Europe
- Research
- Research Data
- Course Catalog
- Identity Federation
- OAI-PMH
- Library
- Metadata
- Open Data
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-30'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: university-of-groningen:ocasys-course-catalog
  name: University of Groningen Ocasys Course Catalog API
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'The JSON backend behind Ocasys, the University''s own course and degree-programme catalog. Verified live 2026-08-30
    with no credentials: course search, full course records, the catalog page projection, programme search, faculties and
    organizational units, controlled option lists and the academic-year list all return 200 to an anonymous GET. Course records
    are bilingual and carry ECTS credits, study level, assessments, formats, prerequisites, offerings, ENLIGHT alliance status
    and per-course UN Sustainable Development Goal flags. Enrollment, permission and course-offering paths in the same namespace
    return 403 without an institutional SAML session and are documented as gated, not as callable. This is the one genuinely
    institution-engineered API surface in the University''s footprint. The OpenAPI below is DERIVED by API Evangelist from
    live probes — the University publishes none, and does not advertise this interface at all.'
  humanURL: https://ocasys.rug.nl/
  baseURL: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api
  tags:
  - Course Catalog
  - Education
  - Curriculum
  - Registrar
  - Open Data
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-groningen-course-catalog-api-openapi.yml
  - type: x-openapi-original
    url: openapi/_original/university-of-groningen-course-catalog-api.yaml
  - type: Website
    url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-groningen-ocasys-course-schema.json
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-groningen-ocasys-program-schema.json
  - type: x-json-ld
    url: json-ld/university-of-groningen-course-context.jsonld
  - type: x-rules
    url: rules/university-of-groningen-course-catalog-rules.yml
  - type: Vocabulary
    url: vocabulary/university-of-groningen-course-catalog-vocabulary.yml
  - type: Errors
    url: errors/university-of-groningen-errors.yml
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/university-of-groningen-authentication.yml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-ocasys-course-search-example.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-ocasys-get-course-example.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-ocasys-program-search-example.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-ocasys-faculties-example.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-ocasys-problem-detail-example.json
- aid: university-of-groningen:pure-oai-pmh
  name: University of Groningen Research Database OAI-PMH
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'Keyless OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata-harvesting endpoint operated by the University on its own domain. Verified live
    2026-08-30: Identify reports protocolVersion 2.0, repositoryName "University of Groningen Research Database", adminEmail
    pure@rug.nl, earliest datestamp 2014-03-11, deletedRecord "no" and second-level granularity; ListIdentifiers over oai_dc
    reports a completeListSize of 1,521,703. Six metadata prefixes are offered — oai_cerif_openaire, qdc, oai_dc, nl_didl,
    mods, xmetadiss — and the set hierarchy follows the OpenAIRE CRIS entity model plus per-year publication sets reaching
    back to 1770. Person records in the CERIF profile carry resolvable ORCID iDs. The CRIS software underneath is Elsevier
    Pure, but this harvesting surface carries the University''s own repository name, sets, profiles and contact and is served
    from rug.nl, so it is treated as institution-operated. The OpenAPI below is DERIVED from live probes.'
  humanURL: https://www.rug.nl/library/support/pure/ug-research-portal/?lang=en
  baseURL: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai
  tags:
  - OAI-PMH
  - Research
  - Metadata
  - Repository
  - CERIF
  - ORCID
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-groningen-oai-pmh-openapi.yml
  - type: x-openapi-original
    url: openapi/_original/university-of-groningen-oai-pmh.yaml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.rug.nl/library/support/pure/ug-research-portal/?lang=en
  - type: x-oai-pmh-identify
    url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=Identify
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-groningen-education-standards-conformance.yml
  - type: Errors
    url: errors/university-of-groningen-errors.yml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-oai-identify-example.xml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-oai-listmetadataformats-example.xml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-groningen-oai-badverb-example.xml
- aid: university-of-groningen:identity-provider
  name: University of Groningen Identity Provider (SURFconext / eduGAIN)
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'The University runs its own SAML 2.0 identity provider and publishes signed federation metadata at signon.rug.nl
    for entityID https://signon.rug.nl/nidp/saml2/metadata. Verified live 2026-08-30: 25KB of XML carrying IDPSSODescriptor,
    SPSSODescriptor and AttributeAuthorityDescriptor roles, HTTP-POST, HTTP-Redirect, HTTP-Artifact and SOAP bindings, OrganizationName
    "Rijksuniversiteit Groningen" and technical contact cit-iam@list.rug.nl. The entity is registered in eduGAIN with SURFconext
    as registration authority, alongside a second University-registered service provider at enlight.hpc.rug.nl. Machine-readable,
    institution-operated by definition, and the surface class this cohort almost never has catalogued. The software is NetIQ
    Access Manager, not Shibboleth.'
  humanURL: https://www.rug.nl/society-business/center-for-information-technology/
  baseURL: https://signon.rug.nl/nidp/saml2/metadata
  tags:
  - Identity Federation
  - SAML
  - eduGAIN
  - SURFconext
  - Single Sign-On
  properties:
  - type: IdentityFederation
    url: https://signon.rug.nl/nidp/saml2/metadata
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-groningen-education-standards-conformance.yml
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/university-of-groningen-authentication.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://wiki.surfnet.nl/display/surfconext/
- aid: university-of-groningen:pure-ws-api
  name: University of Groningen Research Portal (Pure) REST API
  x-operator: tenant
  description: 'The Elsevier Pure web service deployed on the University''s CRIS host. Probed 2026-08-30: pure.rug.nl/ws/api
    redirects to /ws/api/documentation/index.html, whose rel=canonical is https://api.elsevierpure.com/ws/api/documentation/index.html
    — the contract, the version numbering, the documentation and the api-key scheme are all Elsevier''s, and the archived
    source specification carried info.contact.email pure-support@elsevier.com. The University is the tenant and the data is
    the University''s research record. Recorded here as a relationship; Elsevier''s specification is deliberately not saved
    under this institution, and the thirty-seven per-tag splits of it that this repo carried until 2026-08-30 have been removed.'
  humanURL: https://www.rug.nl/library/support/pure/?lang=en
  baseURL: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/api
  tags:
  - CRIS
  - Pure
  - Elsevier
  - Research
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/api
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.rug.nl/library/support/pure/?lang=en
  - type: Website
    url: https://research.rug.nl/
  - type: Authentication
    url: authentication/university-of-groningen-authentication.yml
- aid: university-of-groningen:dataversenl-collection
  name: University of Groningen research data collection on DataverseNL
  x-operator: tenant
  description: 'The University''s default repository for research data and software is a collection inside DataverseNL, the
    shared national Dataverse installation that DANS and SURF operate at dataverse.nl — a host the University does not own
    and that at least seven other institutions in this catalog also point at. The data, the DOIs and the curation are the
    University''s; the Dataverse Native API contract is the platform''s. Probed 2026-08-30: dataverse.nl and dataverse.nl/dataverse/rug
    are live but sit behind a bot challenge, so no API response could be read. The thirty-six per-tag splits of the Dataverse
    contract that this repo carried under the University''s name until 2026-08-30 have been removed.'
  humanURL: https://www.rug.nl/digital-competence-centre/research-data/archive-and-publish/dataversenl
  baseURL: https://dataverse.nl/api
  tags:
  - Research Data
  - Dataverse
  - Repository
  - DANS
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.rug.nl/digital-competence-centre/research-data/archive-and-publish/dataversenl
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/latest/api/native-api.html
  - type: ResearchRepository
    url: https://dataverse.nl/dataverse/rug
- aid: university-of-groningen:worldcat-discovery
  name: University of Groningen Library discovery (OCLC WorldCat)
  x-operator: tenant
  description: Library discovery runs on OCLC WorldCat Discovery at rug.on.worldcat.org, a tenant instance on OCLC's platform
    rather than a catalog interface the University operates. Verified live 2026-08-30. Any WorldCat Search API contract belongs
    to OCLC and is not saved here.
  humanURL: https://www.rug.nl/library/
  baseURL: https://rug.on.worldcat.org/discovery
  tags:
  - Library
  - Discovery
  - OCLC
  - WorldCat
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: LibraryCatalog
    url: https://rug.on.worldcat.org/discovery
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.rug.nl/library/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.rug.nl/
- type: CourseCatalog
  url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/
- type: IdentityFederation
  url: https://signon.rug.nl/nidp/saml2/metadata
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://research.rug.nl/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://www.rug.nl/digital-competence-centre/research-data/archive-and-publish/dataversenl
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://rug.on.worldcat.org/discovery
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://www.rug.nl/society-business/center-for-information-technology/research/services/hpc/habrok
- type: Documentation
  url: https://wiki.hpc.rug.nl/
- type: OpenData
  url: https://www.rug.nl/digital-competence-centre/research-data/archive-and-publish/open-data
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://www.rug.nl/cit/services/ai-office/beleid-en-regelgeving/
- type: AITooling
  url: https://www.rug.nl/cit/services/ai-office/ai-oplossingen/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/rijksuniversiteit-groningen
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/rug-cit-hpc
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/rijksuniversiteit-groningen/
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/univgroningen
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/latest-news/news/latest-rug-news!rss
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.rug.nl/privacy
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.rug.nl/info/disclaimer-copyright
- type: Support
  url: https://www.rug.nl/society-business/center-for-information-technology/support/
- type: SecurityDisclosure
  url: https://www.rug.nl/.well-known/security.txt
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/university-of-groningen-authentication.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/university-of-groningen-education-standards-conformance.yml
- type: Errors
  url: errors/university-of-groningen-errors.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/university-of-groningen-course-catalog-vocabulary.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/university-of-groningen-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/university-of-groningen-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/university-of-groningen-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/university-of-groningen-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/university-of-groningen-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
x-coverage:
  state: covered
  reason: covered
  detail: 'The University of Groningen operates no API programme and this profile now says so, while also naming the three
    surfaces it genuinely does run. What was catalogued here on 2026-06-03 was two vendors'' contracts wearing the University''s
    name: one Elsevier Pure REST specification and one DataverseNL Native API specification, split by refine-openapis into
    seventy-three per-tag documents and registered as seventy-three separate "University of Groningen <tag> API" entries —
    every one of them carrying the same fabricated baseURL, https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai, which is the OAI-PMH endpoint and
    serves none of those paths. Thirty-six of the specifications describe dataverse.nl, a host the University does not own.
    The Pure specification''s own contact address was pure-support@elsevier.com; Dataverse titles in this repo are shipped
    by up to eight other institutions in this catalog. All seventy-three specifications, their two source documents, 145 collections,
    and every schema, structure, example, ruleset, vocabulary, JSON-LD context and agentic-access file derived from them were
    removed on 2026-08-30 — 235 files. In their place: the Ocasys course-catalog API, found by reading the catalog application''s
    own JavaScript bundle and confirmed keyless against live endpoints; the OAI-PMH endpoint, re-verified with all six verbs;
    and the SAML identity provider, confirmed against its published metadata and its eduGAIN registration. The two OpenAPIs
    now in this repo are DERIVED by API Evangelist from those probes and are labelled as such — the University publishes neither.
    Institutional AI posture was found only on the Dutch-language surface, at the CIT AI Office pages.'
  evidence:
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/year-status
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/orgunit/faculties-and-universities
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/course?searchTerm=biology
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/course/WMMB015-05
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/program?searchTerm=biology
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/option-list
    status: 200
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/program
    status: 400
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/2026-2027/course-offering?permission=READ
    status: 403
  - url: https://ocasys.rug.nl/api/v3/api-docs
    status: 404
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=ListMetadataFormats
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=ListSets
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_cerif_openaire&set=openaire_cris_persons
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/oai?verb=Bogus
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.rug.nl/ws/api
    status: 200
  - url: https://signon.rug.nl/nidp/saml2/metadata
    status: 200
  - url: https://technical.edugain.org/api.php?action=list_entities
    status: 200
  - url: https://rug.on.worldcat.org/discovery
    status: 200
  - url: https://dataverse.nl/dataverse/rug
    status: 200
  - url: https://research.rug.nl/
    status: 200
  - url: https://research.rug.nl/en/
    status: 403
  - url: https://wiki.hpc.rug.nl/
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.rug.nl/.well-known/security.txt
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.rug.nl/llms.txt
    status: 404
  - url: https://www.rug.nl/cit/services/ai-office/beleid-en-regelgeving/
    status: 200
  - url: https://www.rug.nl/cit/services/ai-office/ai-oplossingen/
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.rug.nl/
    status: 0
  - url: https://data.rug.nl/
    status: 0
  - url: https://developer.rug.nl/
    status: 0
  - url: https://status.rug.nl/
    status: 0
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
x-enrichment:
  pipeline: pipeline-university.md
  run: '2026-08-30'
  previous_run: '2026-06-03'
  operator_axis_applied: true
  institution_surfaces: 3
  tenant_surfaces: 3
  vendor_contracts_removed: 2
  files_removed: 235
  apis_entries_before: 75
  apis_entries_after: 6
  contracts_saved: 2
  note: 'A correct re-profile of a vendor-attributed institution LOWERS its score. Contract volume fell from seventy-three
    specifications to two, and both that remain are DERIVED by API Evangelist from live probes rather than published by the
    University of Groningen. That is the pipeline working. The net find is real, though: an undocumented but genuinely institution-engineered
    course-catalog API that no one had catalogued.'