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Research & academic platforms

Gate access to research tools, datasets, and academic SaaS to users from eligible institutions — without a manual approval queue.

The problem

Research software, HPC access, datasets, and academic SaaS all face the same question: is this person actually affiliated with an eligible institution? Today that often means manual approval queues, institutional email verification (which anyone can fake with a university email alias), or license keys that leak.

The Studid way

Studid answers the affiliation question with the strongest proof available: the user's own institutional single sign-on. When a researcher logs in through their university IdP, the university itself asserts their affiliation — the same mechanism journals and federations trust.

Your integration:

  1. Create a verification — POST /v2/auth/verification
  2. Redirect the user to their institution's login through Studid
  3. Check the result — GET /v2/auth/verification/{id} returns the verified affiliation

Two endpoints, and the entire SAML protocol — metadata exchange, certificate validation, federation membership — is handled for you.

What you get

  • entityId — the exact institution (e.g. a TU9 university) the user authenticated at
  • authIdentifier — a persistent identifier you can map to a research account
  • affiliations — role data (student, faculty, staff) when the IdP releases it

This gives you license enforcement tied to real institutions, without a single document check.

Why it works for research tools

  • Eligibility by institution — restrict a license to specific federations, countries, or named universities
  • MFA included — users authenticate at their university, including Duo, Entra ID, or FIDO2 where required
  • Same user, same account — persistent identifiers survive re-logins, so a researcher's work is never lost
  • Auditable — you always know which institution vouched for the login

Get started

See the integration guide for the full API walkthrough, or try the live demo and verify a real institutional login in under a minute.

Works even without a persistent user ID

Some institutions only issue a transient identifier, so authIdentifier can be null. That is a normal outcome, not a failed login: the user still authenticated at a real institution, and entityId always proves which one. Use it for eligibility and bind the result to your own session token for continuity.

Ready to try it?

Authenticate with your university or research institute — no account needed, takes under a minute.

Read the guide