--- name: King Abdulaziz University description: King Abdulaziz University public developer/API footprint review for APIs.json cataloging. url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/kau/refs/heads/main/review.yml created: '2026-06-03' modified: '2026-09-01' reviews: - date: '2026-09-01' rating: 4 summary: >- Re-profiled under the API Evangelist university pipeline, which settles WHO OPERATES each surface before saving anything. The 2026-06-03 review is corrected on its two central findings. It recorded KAU's Open Data page as "a beta placeholder with no datasets, endpoints, or downloads"; the page in fact publishes eight live https://opendata.kau.edu.sa/api/StudentsData API invocations and a decade of dataset downloads. And it recorded KAU's identity infrastructure as merely "gated"; KAU operates its own SAML 2.0 identity provider, evidenced during this run by a freshly signed AuthnRequest its Blackboard tenancy addressed to https://iam.kau.edu.sa/oamfed/idp/samlv20 (the earlier review named /oamsso-bin/login-fed.pl, which is the OAM login entry point, not the SAML protocol endpoint). KAU therefore has two genuinely institution-operated surfaces, which is more than most of this cohort. It also has three tenant relationships that are recorded but whose contracts are deliberately NOT claimed as KAU's: its journals run on Elsevier's Digital Commons at kauj.researchcommons.org, complete with a working OAI-PMH 2.0 data provider back to 2000 administered from dc-support@elsevier.com; its LMS is a Blackboard Learn SaaS tenancy at lms.kau.edu.sa; and its scientific platform at libsp.kau.edu.sa is an Al Manhal tenancy. The OAI-PMH endpoint is the best machine-readable surface associated with this university and it is Elsevier's engineering, not KAU's. Registry memberships verified: Crossref member 2709 (prefix 10.4197, 1,920 DOIs) and 53473, plus ROR https://ror.org/02ma4wv74 and Crossref Funder ID 501100004054. Evidenced negatives: no DataCite account despite 1,249 DOIs affiliated to KAU's ROR, no ORCID member organisation, no Shibboleth, no membership of Saudi Arabia's Maeen identity federation or eduGAIN although 38 Saudi entities are registered, no GitHub organisation, no developer portal, and no API key or client registration anywhere. One limitation stated plainly: every host in KAU's self-hosted 192.162.72.0/24 block refused connections on 443 from two independent network egresses, while KAU's CloudFront-fronted www host and all three vendor tenancies answered normally. That is a geographic restriction on KAU's own estate rather than a dead service or a block on us — the IdP was proven live indirectly, and the Open Data API's last verified 200 is an Internet Archive capture of 2025-04-17 returning 1,886 records, corroborated by seven further 200 captures across 2024. Artifacts derived from it are marked derived, not probed-live. endpoints: - url: https://www.kau.edu.sa/page/open-data status: 200 note: >- Publishes eight opendata.kau.edu.sa API invocations, an Open Data API user guide and a licence. Corrects the 2026-06-03 finding of an empty placeholder. - url: https://opendata.kau.edu.sa/api/StudentsData?type=u&year=2023&semester=1 status: 0 note: >- Institution-operated open data API. Unreachable on 443 from two egresses; DNS resolves to 192.162.72.12. Last verified 200 via Internet Archive 2025-04-17, application/json, 1,886 aggregate records. - url: https://lms.kau.edu.sa/auth-saml/saml/metadata?apId=_7123_1 status: 200 note: >- Returns a signed SAML 2.0 AuthnRequest whose Destination is https://iam.kau.edu.sa/oamfed/idp/samlv20 — the evidence for KAU's own IdP. - url: https://lms.kau.edu.sa/learn/api/public/v1/system/version status: 200 note: Blackboard Learn 4000.21.0-rel.28+435d029 on KAU's tenancy. Tenant, not institution. - url: https://lms.kau.edu.sa/learn/api/public/v1/courses status: 401 note: Learn REST API provisioned and gated. A 401 rather than 404 is the finding. - url: https://kauj.researchcommons.org/do/oai/?verb=Identify status: 200 note: >- OAI-PMH 2.0, repositoryName "King Abdulaziz University Journals", adminEmail dc-support@elsevier.com. Tenant relationship recorded; vendor contract not saved. - url: https://libsp.kau.edu.sa/ status: 200 note: King Abdulaziz Scientific Platform; CNAMEs to aws-prod-lb.almanhal.com. Al Manhal tenancy. - url: https://api.crossref.org/members/2709 status: 200 note: KAU Scientific Publishing Centre, prefix 10.4197, 1,920 DOIs. Real membership. - url: https://ror.org/02ma4wv74 status: 200 note: ROR registration, domain kau.edu.sa, Funder ID 501100004054. - url: https://api.datacite.org/clients?query=abdulaziz status: 200 note: meta.total = 0. No DataCite membership, despite 1,249 DOIs affiliated to KAU's ROR. - url: https://technical.edugain.org/api.php?action=list_entities&format=json status: 200 note: 13,200 entities, 0 for kau.edu.sa. 38 Saudi entities registered by maeen.sa. - url: https://www.kau.edu.sa/GetFile.aspx?id=273063&fn=g2013.xls status: 404 note: >- Dataset download linked from KAU's own Open Data page. Every GetFile.aspx URL on that page is dead after the site's migration to Next.js — the spreadsheet half of the open data programme is broken while the API half is not. - url: https://sso.kau.edu.sa/ status: 0 note: Unreachable from this run; DNS resolves to 192.162.72.15. Linked from KAU's live page. - date: '2026-06-03' rating: 1 summary: >- King Abdulaziz University (QS World 2025 #149) has no openly documented, self-service developer API, API reference, or developer portal that could be verified. The official website (kau.edu.sa) resolves and confirms institutional identity; its "Open Data" page is a beta placeholder with no datasets, endpoints, or downloads. KAU runs gated identity infrastructure (sso.kau.edu.sa and an Oracle Access Manager federation endpoint at iam.kau.edu.sa) and library/scientific platforms, but none expose public, documented APIs. No official KAU GitHub organization exists (only a student Google Developer Student Club and individual projects). Library and scientific-platform hosts could not be fetched live from this environment (connection refused / 403 / timeout) and search results were used to confirm their existence; no endpoints were fabricated. The single cataloged "API" reflects the gated SSO/identity infrastructure honestly rather than any open programmatic interface. endpoints: - url: https://www.kau.edu.sa/en status: 200 note: Official KAU website; verified live via fetch (.gov.sa, government-confirmed). - url: https://www.kau.edu.sa/page/open-data status: 200 note: Open Data page exists but is a beta placeholder with no datasets, APIs, or links. - url: https://sso.kau.edu.sa/ status: 0 note: SSO portal referenced in search results; did not resolve/fetch from this environment. - url: https://iam.kau.edu.sa/oamsso-bin/login-fed.pl status: 0 note: Oracle Access Manager federation login; gated, did not fetch from this environment. - url: https://library.kau.edu.sa/Default-212-EN status: 0 note: Deanship of Library Affairs portal; connection refused from this environment, exists per search. - url: https://libsp.kau.edu.sa/ status: 403 note: King Abdulaziz Scientific Platform; returned 403 Forbidden, no documented public API. - url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/king-abdulaziz-university status: 200 note: Official LinkedIn school page. - url: https://x.com/kauedu_sa status: 200 note: Official KAU X/Twitter account (1.3M followers, joined 2009). - url: https://github.com/api-evangelist status: 200 note: No official KAU GitHub org found; only student club Google-Developer-Student-Club-KAU.