---
aid: heriot-watt
name: Heriot-Watt University
description: >-
  Heriot-Watt University is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland,
  with additional campuses in the Scottish Borders, Orkney, Dubai, and Malaysia. It is
  ranked #257 in the QS World University Rankings 2025. Heriot-Watt's public, machine-readable
  footprint centers on its Research Portal (powered by Elsevier Pure) for research outputs,
  projects, and expertise, and on Ex Libris Alma/Primo library Discovery and Springshare
  LibCal services. The university does not operate a public developer portal; programmatic
  interfaces such as the Pure OAI-PMH/REST API and the LibCal API exist as platform features
  but are gated and require credentials or institutional arrangement rather than being openly
  self-service.
type: Index
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/heriot-watt/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
  - Education
  - Higher Education
  - University
  - Scotland
  - United Kingdom
  - Research
  - Library
  - Open Access
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - aid: heriot-watt:research-portal
    name: Heriot-Watt Research Portal (Pure)
    description: >-
      Public research information portal powered by Elsevier Pure, exposing Heriot-Watt
      University publications, projects, research data, activities, and researcher
      profiles. The portal is publicly browsable and searchable. Pure provides an
      OAI-PMH and REST API as platform features, but at this institution those
      programmatic endpoints are not openly available (the OAI/ws endpoints redirect
      to an error and require credentialed or arranged access).
    humanURL: https://researchportal.hw.ac.uk/
    baseURL: https://researchportal.hw.ac.uk/
    tags: [ Research, Repository, Pure, Open Access, Publications ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://www.hw.ac.uk/uk/research/research-portal.htm
  - aid: heriot-watt:library-discovery
    name: Heriot-Watt Library Discovery (Ex Libris Primo / Alma)
    description: >-
      Library Discovery search across the catalogue, ebooks, journal articles, and
      news, delivered on the Ex Libris Alma library management platform with the
      Primo discovery interface. Ex Libris exposes Primo and Alma REST APIs as
      platform capabilities, but these require an Ex Libris API key and institutional
      arrangement and are not published as a self-service public API.
    humanURL: https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/professional-services/information-services/find-resources
    tags: [ Library, Discovery, Primo, Alma, Ex Libris, Catalog ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/professional-services/information-services/find-resources
  - aid: heriot-watt:libcal
    name: Heriot-Watt LibCal (Springshare)
    description: >-
      Springshare LibCal service for library room bookings, events, and opening hours.
      LibCal offers a documented REST API behind an admin-configured OAuth client; the
      API surface is reachable at the institution's LibCal host but requires
      authenticated credentials rather than open public access.
    humanURL: https://hw.ac.libcal.com/
    tags: [ Library, Bookings, Events, LibCal, Springshare ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://hw.ac.libcal.com/
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.hw.ac.uk/
  - type: Status
    url: https://www.hwstatus.info/
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://uk.linkedin.com/school/heriot-watt-university/
  - type: Plans
    url: plans/heriot-watt-plans-pricing.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/heriot-watt-rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: finops/heriot-watt-finops.yml
  - type: Review
    url: review.yml
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com