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HIF:The hypergraph interchange format for higher-order networks
Coll, Martín Joslyn, Cliff A. Landry, Nicholas W. Lotito, Quintino Francesco Myers, Audun Pickard, Joshua Praggastis, Brenda Szufel, Przemysław
Coll, Martín
Joslyn, Cliff A.
Landry, Nicholas W.
Lotito, Quintino Francesco
Myers, Audun
Pickard, Joshua
Praggastis, Brenda
Szufel, Przemysław
Title / Series / Name
Network Science
Publication Volume
13
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
data standard
directed hypergraph
higher-order
hypergraph
network
simplicial complex
Social Psychology
Communication
Sociology and Political Science
directed hypergraph
higher-order
hypergraph
network
simplicial complex
Social Psychology
Communication
Sociology and Political Science
Files
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/28803
Abstract
Many empirical systems contain complex interactions of arbitrary size, representing, for example, chemical reactions, social groups, co-authorship relationships, and ecological dependencies. These interactions are known as higher-order interactions, and the collection of these interactions comprise a higher-order network, or hypergraph. Hypergraphs have established themselves as a popular and versatile mathematical representation of such systems, and a number of software packages written in various programming languages have been designed to analyze these networks. However, the ecosystem of higher-order network analysis software is fragmented due to specialization of each software’s programming interface and compatible data representations. To enable seamless data exchange between higher-order network analysis software packages, we introduce the Hypergraph Interchange Format (HIF), a standardized format for storing higher-order network data. HIF supports multiple types of higher-order networks, including undirected hypergraphs, directed hypergraphs, and abstract simplicial complexes, while actively exploring extensions to represent multiplex hypergraphs, temporal hypergraphs, and ordered hypergraphs. To accommodate the wide variety of metadata used in different contexts, HIF also includes support for attributes associated with nodes, edges, and incidences. This initiative is a collaborative effort involving authors, maintainers, and contributors from prominent hypergraph software packages. This project introduces a JSON schema with corresponding documentation and unit tests, example HIF-compliant datasets, and tutorials demonstrating the use of HIF with several popular higher-order network analysis software packages.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2025-12-11
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1017/nws.2025.10018