HIF: The hypergraph interchange format for higher-order networks

2025-07-15

AI Summary

High-order network analysis software is highly fragmented due to inconsistent interfaces and data formats, severely hindering cross-tool interoperability. To address this, we propose the Hypergraph Interchange Format (HIF)—the first cross-platform, standardized data exchange specification explicitly designed for high-order networks. HIF is formally defined using JSON Schema and natively supports core structures including undirected/directed hypergraphs and simplicial complexes. Its extensible architecture accommodates multilayer, temporal, and ordered hypergraphs without modification. We provide comprehensive supporting artifacts: formal documentation, unit tests, a benchmark dataset of canonical examples, and integration tutorials for major libraries (e.g., HyperNetX, SimplicialLaplacians). Empirical evaluation demonstrates that HIF significantly improves data interchange efficiency across mainstream tools. By enabling seamless, reproducible data exchange, HIF lays the foundation for a unified, interoperable hypergraph analysis ecosystem.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Graph Mining, Social Network Analysis & Community
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Computational Complexity of Reasoning
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Algorithms and analysis for heterogeneous, signed, attributed, multi-relational, temporal, higher-order, and annotated Web-related graphs
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data integration and cleaning
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications

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 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.

Problem

• Standardizing data exchange for higher-order network analysis software
• Supporting diverse hypergraph types and metadata attributes
• Fragmented ecosystem due to specialized interfaces and data formats

Innovation

• Standardized format for higher-order network data
• Supports undirected and directed hypergraphs
• Includes metadata attributes for nodes and edges