University of York

aid: university-of-york
name: University of York
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'The University of York is a public research university in York, United Kingdom, and a member of the Russell
  Group. It operates no central developer portal, no API gateway, no self-service key issuance and no documented course, timetable
  or student-information API — and this profile says so rather than padding it. What it does operate, found by probing rather
  than by reading claims, is a genuinely first-party machine-readable estate around its digitised collections: a keyless JSON
  search API over 415,165 archive, library and cultural-heritage records at discover.york.ac.uk, a IIIF Image API 3.0 deployment
  at compliance level 2, IIIF Presentation API 3.0 manifests and canvases, all under the University''s own ARK namespace (NAAN
  36941); plus a live OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint on its own research-portal host that emits ORCID iDs in its MODS records,
  and a Shibboleth SAML 2.0 identity provider. Everything else that looks like a York API is someone else''s contract running
  under York''s name: the Elsevier Pure REST Web Service, Ex Libris Primo/Alma discovery (YorSearch), and the White Rose Research
  Online and White Rose eTheses Online EPrints repositories shared with Leeds and Sheffield. Those are recorded here as tenant
  relationships, which they are, and not as York engineering, which they are not.'
type: Index
position: Producing
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-york.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-york/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- United Kingdom
- Russell Group
- Digital Collections
- Cultural Heritage
- Archives
- IIIF
- Research Data
- Open Access
- OAI-PMH
- Identity Federation
- Library
- Research Computing
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-30'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: true
  label: Institution-hosted collections APIs · you call their endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - openapi
  - probed
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: open
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free · keyless, no registration, CORS open
  confidence: high
  source:
  - authentication
  - probed
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
x-coverage:
  state: covered
  reason: covered
  detail: 'The University of York does operate real, first-party, machine-readable APIs and they were found and verified by
    live probe on 2026-08-30, not inferred from links. Three contracts are saved: a keyless Elasticsearch-backed search API
    at discover.york.ac.uk/api/search-simple and /api/search over 415,165 digital-collections records; IIIF Image API 3.0
    (info.json declares profile level2) and IIIF Presentation API 3.0 manifests and canvases on the same host; and OAI-PMH
    2.0 at pure.york.ac.uk/ws/oai, whose Identify response names the repository "The University of York" with adminEmail pure-support@york.ac.uk,
    and whose MODS records carry typed ORCID iDs. The footprint is nonetheless narrow and undocumented: York publishes no
    OpenAPI, no developer portal, no changelog, no licence and no terms for any of it, and every field in this repository''s
    contracts was measured rather than read. No course, timetable, campus-life, transit or open-data API was found — data.york.ac.uk,
    courses.york.ac.uk, sis.york.ac.uk, opendata.york.ac.uk and developer(s).york.ac.uk do not resolve at all. api.york.ac.uk
    DOES resolve and serves the University''s own branded "403 local" page, an institution-operated API host restricted to
    the campus network; that is a real internal estate we cannot see, and it is recorded rather than counted. The library
    discovery layer and the research repositories are real institutional facts but vendor-operated, and are recorded as tenant.
    One route referenced by the site''s own JavaScript, /api/annotations/{manifest}/{canvas}, returns a 200 carrying the HTML
    404 shell and is NOT deployed — it was deliberately excluded.'
  generated: '2026-08-30'
  method: probed
  evidence:
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/api/search-simple?q=york&page=1&size=2
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/api/search?q=york&size=2
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/iiif/3/ark:/36941/common/objects/uoy-logo/info.json
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/iiif/3/ark:/36941/common/objects/uoy-logo/full/max/0/default.jpg
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/ark:/36941/9952973300001381/presentation/3/manifest
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/ark:/36941/796351/presentation/3/canvas/802563
    status: 200
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/ark:/36941/796351/presentation/3/collection
    status: 403
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/api/annotations/796351/802563
    status: 200
    note: HTML 404 shell, not deployed
  - url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/oai?verb=ListSets
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/api/documentation/index.html
    status: 200
  - url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/api/524/openapi.json
    status: 401
  - url: https://shib.york.ac.uk/idp/profile/SAML2/Redirect/SSO
    status: 400
  - url: https://shib.york.ac.uk/idp/profile/Metadata/SAML
    status: 200
    note: returns the Shibboleth error page, not SAML metadata
  - url: https://api.york.ac.uk/
    status: 403
    note: '"403 local - University of York" — campus-network restricted'
  - url: https://www.york.ac.uk/static/stable/opensearch.xml
    status: 200
    note: OpenSearch 1.1 description document; HTML results only, no JSON interface
  - url: https://data.york.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://courses.york.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://sis.york.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://opendata.york.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://developer.york.ac.uk/
    status: 0
  - url: https://www.york.ac.uk/llms.txt
    status: 404
  - url: https://www.york.ac.uk/.well-known/security.txt
    status: 404
  - url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/llms.txt
    status: 404
x-attribution-correction:
  date: '2026-08-30'
  pipeline: pipeline-university
  removed:
    contracts: 3
    derived_artifacts: 9
    reason: 'The 2026-06-03 profile saved the White Rose EPrints consortium''s OAI-PMH contract under York''s slug. openapi/_original/
      held university-of-york-white-rose-etheses-oai.yaml and university-of-york-white-rose-research-oai.yaml, whose servers
      are etheses.whiterose.ac.uk and eprints.whiterose.ac.uk and whose contacts are etheses@whiterose.ac.uk and eprints@whiterose.ac.uk
      — a shared repository the University of York co-owns with Leeds and Sheffield, on a domain York does not own. refine-openapis
      welded the two into university-of-york-oai2-api-openapi.yml, and the audit flagged the result as a weld: three specs
      naming a host the repo does not own while apis.yml based the entry on one it does. Every schema, structure, example,
      ruleset, collection, agentic-access and capability file in the repository was derived from those two documents and inherited
      their provenance, so they were removed too, file by file. The vocabulary, JSON-LD context and Spectral ruleset were
      rewritten rather than deleted, because the paths are canonical and the replacements describe the institution''s own
      surfaces.'
  retained_as_tenant:
  - White Rose Research Online (EPrints, consortium with Leeds and Sheffield)
  - White Rose eTheses Online (EPrints, consortium with Leeds and Sheffield)
  - Elsevier Pure Web Services REST API
  - Ex Libris Primo / Alma (YorSearch)
  added_as_institution:
  - University of York Digital Collections Search API
  - University of York Digital Collections IIIF APIs
  - University of York Research Portal OAI-PMH
  - University of York Shibboleth Identity Provider
  score_expectation: Removing a consortium contract and adding three verified first-party ones changes what is being measured,
    not just how much of it there is. A correction that lowers a score is a success.
apis:
- aid: university-of-york:digital-collections-search
  name: University of York Digital Collections Search API
  x-operator: institution
  description: The keyless JSON search interface behind discover.york.ac.uk, the University of York's Digital Collections.
    Two live endpoints — /api/search-simple, which the public search page calls, and /api/search, which returns a different
    aggregation set — query an Elasticsearch index of 415,165 records drawn from the University Library, the Borthwick Institute
    for Archives and cultural-heritage partners. Faceted by creator, type, work type, collection and by collection-specific
    families for the York Cause Papers and archival records. No key, no registration, CORS open to any origin. York publishes
    no documentation for it; this contract was written from live probes and from the request construction in the site's own
    JavaScript.
  humanURL: https://discover.york.ac.uk/
  baseURL: https://discover.york.ac.uk
  tags:
  - Digital Collections
  - Search
  - Archives
  - Cultural Heritage
  - Open Access
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-york-digital-collections-search-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/about/
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-york-digital-collections-item-schema.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-york-digital-collections-search-example.json
  - type: x-authentication
    url: authentication/university-of-york-authentication.yml
  - type: x-errors
    url: errors/university-of-york-errors.yml
  - type: x-lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/university-of-york-lifecycle.yml
- aid: university-of-york:digital-collections-iiif
  name: University of York Digital Collections IIIF APIs
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'The University of York serves its digitised material through two IIIF specifications on its own host: IIIF
    Image API 3.0 at compliance level 2 (the served info.json declares "profile": "level2", "type": "ImageService3" and its
    own extraFeatures, extraFormats and extraQualities), and IIIF Presentation API 3.0 manifests and canvases. Identifiers
    are ARKs under the University''s Name Assigning Authority Number 36941. Keyless and CORS open. The IIIF Collection endpoint
    is not deployed, so there is no machine-readable entry point that enumerates the collections — a harvester has to start
    from the search API.'
  humanURL: https://discover.york.ac.uk/collections/
  baseURL: https://discover.york.ac.uk
  tags:
  - IIIF
  - Digital Collections
  - Image
  - Cultural Heritage
  - Archives
  - JSON-LD
  tags_raw:
  - IIIF
  - Digital Collections
  - Images
  - Cultural Heritage
  - Archives
  - JSON-LD
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-york-digital-collections-iiif-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/about/
  - type: x-json-schema
    url: json-schema/university-of-york-iiif-image-info-schema.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-york-iiif-image-info-example.json
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-york-iiif-presentation-manifest-example.json
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-york-conformance.yml
  - type: x-errors
    url: errors/university-of-york-errors.yml
- aid: university-of-york:research-portal-oai-pmh
  name: University of York Research Portal OAI-PMH
  x-operator: institution
  description: OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting on the University's own registrable domain. The Identify response names the repository
    "The University of York", gives adminEmail pure-support@york.ac.uk and an earliest datestamp of 2014-10-14. All six verbs
    are live. Five metadata formats are served — mods, xmetadiss, nl_didl, oai_dc and qdc — and the MODS records carry typed
    ORCID iDs and DOIs. Sets cover persons, publications, publications with files, and publications by year. The deletedRecord
    policy is "no", so incremental harvesting cannot detect withdrawals. The underlying product is Elsevier Pure; its proprietary
    REST API is a separate, tenant surface and its contract is deliberately not saved here.
  humanURL: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/
  baseURL: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/oai
  tags:
  - OAI-PMH
  - Research Data
  - Open Access
  - ORCID
  - Metadata Harvesting
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/university-of-york-research-portal-oai-pmh-openapi.yml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-york-oai-pmh-identify-example.xml
  - type: x-example
    url: examples/university-of-york-oai-pmh-getrecord-example.xml
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-york-conformance.yml
  - type: Portal
    url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/
- aid: university-of-york:shibboleth-idp
  name: University of York Shibboleth Identity Provider
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'The University''s own SAML 2.0 identity provider at shib.york.ac.uk, running Shibboleth. It is the authentication
    surface through which every bought platform — Pure, Primo, the VLE — is actually reached, and it is institution-operated
    by definition. Confirmed by behaviour: the SAML2 HTTP-Redirect SSO profile endpoint answers, and the IdP status handler
    is present but access-restricted. Its SAML metadata is NOT published from a University host; it is distributed through
    the UK Access Management Federation, so no machine-readable artifact could be retrieved and none has been invented. Recorded
    as a surface, not as a contract.'
  humanURL: https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/
  baseURL: https://shib.york.ac.uk/idp
  tags:
  - Identity Federation
  - Shibboleth
  - SAML
  - Single Sign-On
  properties:
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/university-of-york-conformance.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/
- aid: university-of-york:pure-web-services
  name: Elsevier Pure Web Services (University of York tenant)
  x-operator: tenant
  description: The Elsevier Pure REST Web Service running on the University of York's tenant host. The documentation index
    answers without a key and the versioned API serves a 1.1 MB OpenAPI document, but the API itself returns 401 to an unauthenticated
    caller and keys are issued by the institution's Pure administrators rather than self-service. This is York's research
    information — and Elsevier's contract. The vendor specification is deliberately NOT saved under this institution's slug;
    that misattribution is exactly what this pipeline exists to prevent. What IS saved is the OAI-PMH surface above, which
    is protocol-standard and self-identifies as the University of York.
  humanURL: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/
  baseURL: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/api
  tags:
  - Research Information
  - CRIS
  - Elsevier Pure
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/ws/api/documentation/index.html
  - type: Portal
    url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/
- aid: university-of-york:yorsearch-primo
  name: YorSearch Library Discovery (Ex Libris Primo / Alma)
  x-operator: tenant
  description: YorSearch is the University of York library discovery service, an Ex Libris Primo front end over an Alma backend
    (view id 44YORK_INST:NUI). The discovery UI is live on a York host, but programmatic access runs through Ex Libris's own
    gateway at api-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com and requires an Ex Libris key. York's catalogue, Ex Libris's contract — recorded
    as a tenant relationship, not as York engineering.
  humanURL: https://www.york.ac.uk/library/resources/yorsearch-help/
  baseURL: https://yorsearch.york.ac.uk/discovery/search?vid=44YORK_INST:NUI
  tags:
  - Library
  - Discovery
  - Primo
  - Alma
  - Ex Libris
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.york.ac.uk/library/resources/yorsearch-help/
  - type: Portal
    url: https://yorsearch.york.ac.uk/discovery/search?vid=44YORK_INST:NUI
- aid: university-of-york:wrro-oai
  name: White Rose Research Online OAI-PMH (consortium)
  x-operator: tenant
  description: White Rose Research Online is the shared EPrints institutional repository of the Universities of York, Leeds
    and Sheffield, on the consortium's own whiterose.ac.uk domain. Its OAI-PMH 2.0 interface is live and harvests York research
    outputs alongside those of the other two members. York co-owns the deployment; EPrints wrote the protocol implementation
    and the consortium, not York, operates the host. The 2026-06-03 profile saved this contract under York's slug; it has
    been removed and the relationship recorded here instead.
  humanURL: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/
  baseURL: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/cgi/oai2
  tags:
  - Research Repository
  - OAI-PMH
  - EPrints
  - Open Access
  - Consortium
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Portal
    url: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/information.html
- aid: university-of-york:wreo-oai
  name: White Rose eTheses Online OAI-PMH (consortium)
  x-operator: tenant
  description: White Rose eTheses Online is the shared EPrints theses repository of York, Leeds and Sheffield, running on
    the consortium's own domain. Its OAI-PMH 2.0 interface Identifies as "White Rose eTheses Online" and harvests University
    of York thesis metadata. Consortium- operated on vendor software; recorded as a tenant relationship rather than as a York
    contract.
  humanURL: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/
  baseURL: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/cgi/oai2
  tags:
  - Research Repository
  - OAI-PMH
  - EPrints
  - Theses
  - Open Access
  - Consortium
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Portal
    url: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/about/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/university-of-york
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://uk.linkedin.com/school/uniofyork/
- type: Status
  url: https://status.york.ac.uk/
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/about/legal-statements/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/about/legal-statements/#privacy
- type: Support
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/
- type: OpenData
  url: https://discover.york.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://yorsearch.york.ac.uk/discovery/search?vid=44YORK_INST:NUI
- type: CourseCatalog
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://vikingdocs.york.ac.uk/
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/tools/viking/
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/about/ai/
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/assessment-and-examination/ai/taught-student-guidance/
- type: AITooling
  url: https://www.york.ac.uk/it-services/tools/generative-ai-tools/
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/university-of-york-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/university-of-york-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/university-of-york-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/university-of-york-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/university-of-york-conformance.yml
- type: x-authentication
  url: authentication/university-of-york-authentication.yml
- type: x-errors
  url: errors/university-of-york-errors.yml
- type: x-lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/university-of-york-lifecycle.yml
- type: x-vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/university-of-york-vocabulary.yml
- type: x-rules
  url: rules/university-of-york-rules.yml
- type: x-rules
  url: rules/university-of-york-jsonschema-spectral-rules.yml
- type: x-json-ld
  url: json-ld/university-of-york-context.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com