--- name: Hamad Bin Khalifa University description: Hamad Bin Khalifa University public developer/API footprint review for APIs.json cataloging. url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/hbku/refs/heads/main/review.yml created: '2026-06-03' modified: '2026-08-30' reviews: - date: '2026-08-30' rating: 6 pipeline: pipeline-university.md summary: >- Re-profiled under the university pipeline, with operator attribution settled before anything was saved. The June review's central conclusion — that HBKU operates no institutional API — was wrong in one direction and its artifact set was wrong in another. Wrong in the artifact set: eleven "HBKU" OpenAPIs in this repo were a single Figshare contract (info.title "Figshare API", contact "Figshare Support", servers https://api.figshare.com/v2) split by tag, a document a dozen other universities in this catalog also ship. Those and every artifact derived from them have been removed. Wrong in the conclusion: HBKU does operate first-party APIs, through the Qatar Computing Research Institute. Fanar — Qatar's Arabic generative-AI platform — publishes a genuine first-party OpenAPI 3.1.0 with 12 operations, bearer auth, a fourteen-code error vocabulary and a published per-model rate-limit table. Farasa exposes six live Arabic NLP endpoints. Two further surfaces the June review recorded as having no API in fact do: Elmi serves a fully working public OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint, and the academic catalog ships a JSON course-search API (currently returning a server-side database error). Net effect on score is expected to be down, not up: the Figshare volume that inflated it is gone and what replaces it is smaller, but it is actually HBKU's. endpoints: - url: https://api.fanar.qa/openapi.json status: 200 note: First-party OpenAPI 3.1.0, 156KB, 11 paths / 12 operations. x-operator institution. - url: https://api.fanar.qa/v1/models status: 401 note: 'Live and keyed: {"error":{"code":"invalid_authentication","status":401}}.' - url: https://api.fanar.qa/docs status: 200 note: Scalar-rendered API reference. - url: https://api.fanar.qa/request/en status: 200 note: API access request form — the only onboarding path. - url: https://fanar.qa/en status: 200 note: 'States the operator verbatim: "Developed by Qatar Computing Research Institute at Hamad Bin Khalifa University".' - url: https://fanar.qa/en/terms-of-services status: 200 note: Real page. /en/terms is a soft-404 returning the homepage shell. - url: https://qcri.org/ status: 200 note: Redirects to https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/qcri — this is what makes QCRI surfaces institution-operated. - url: https://farasa.qcri.org/webapi/lemmatization/ status: 400 note: 'Live, keyed: "invalid api key. please register at: https://farasa.qcri.org". Same for segmentation, pos, ner, diacritize, spellcheck.' - url: https://farasa.qcri.org/webapi/constituency/ status: 404 note: Negative control — advertised module with no web API endpoint. - url: https://elmi.hbku.edu.qa/ws/oai?verb=Identify status: 200 note: Valid OAI-PMH 2.0 envelope, adminEmail elmi@hbku.edu.qa. ListMetadataFormats, ListSets and ListRecords all answer unauthenticated. - url: https://elmi.hbku.edu.qa/ws/api/persons status: 401 note: Elsevier Pure REST API, key-gated; canonicalizes to api.elsevierpure.com. Tenant — no spec saved. - url: https://catalog.hbku.edu.qa/course-search/api/?page=fose&route=search status: 200 note: 'CourseLeaf JSON API answers, but returns {"fatal":"Could not execute database query: Cannot open database: \"fose-clss202410\""} for the term the page itself advertises.' - url: https://manara.qnl.qa/hbku status: 202 note: 'AWS WAF challenge (x-amzn-waf-action: challenge). Live but not machine-readable unattended. Tenant.' - url: https://api.hbku.edu.qa/ status: 200 note: Resolves, but BIG-IP returns "Request Rejected" for every path. No documented interface. - url: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/.well-known/security.txt status: 404 note: No security.txt. - url: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/llms.txt status: 404 note: No llms.txt. - url: https://technical.edugain.org/api.php?action=list_feds status: 200 note: 92 federations, none Qatari; no hbku.edu.qa entity in the eduGAIN entity list. No IdentityFederation surface. - url: https://github.com/qcri status: 200 note: QCRI's GitHub org, 100+ active research repos. Replaces the cri-lab-hbku pointer, which is a single lab's personal account. # --- prior review, retained --- - date: '2026-06-03' rating: 2 summary: >- HBKU operates no centralized public developer portal or documented institutional API. Its official website, academic catalog, library, and research management (Elmi) sites resolve live but expose no public programmatic access; catalog and SIS data are gated. The verifiable public, machine-readable footprint is HBKU research output deposited in Manara - Qatar Research Repository (Figshare-powered, hosted by Qatar National Library), which is reachable through Figshare's public REST API v2 and OAI-PMH endpoint — both confirmed live. A research-lab GitHub org (cri-lab-hbku) exists but is not a central university API org. No endpoints were fabricated; only third-party hosting platforms with confirmed public APIs are cataloged as HBKU's API surface. endpoints: - url: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/home status: 200 note: Official HBKU website; no public API or open-data links advertised. - url: https://catalog.hbku.edu.qa/ status: 200 note: Academic catalog; print/PDF export only, no API or JSON. - url: https://www.hbku.edu.qa/en/hbku-library status: 200 note: HBKU Library; OPAC/databases gated, no public API documented. - url: https://research.hbku.edu.qa/ status: 200 note: Elmi research management portal; resolves, no public API. - url: https://manara.qnl.qa/hbku status: 202 note: HBKU hub on Manara Qatar Research Repository (Figshare-powered, QNL-hosted). - url: https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai?verb=Identify status: 200 note: Figshare OAI-PMH v2.0 endpoint live; harvests Manara/HBKU metadata. - url: https://docs.figshare.com/ status: 200 note: Public Figshare API v2 documentation (base https://api.figshare.com/v2). - url: https://github.com/cri-lab-hbku status: 200 note: HBKU Cybersecurity Research Lab GitHub org with public repos; not a central API org.