AHORN repository standardizes higher-order network datasets for easy reuse

Higher-order network datasets—which capture multi-way interactions beyond simple pairwise links—are currently scattered across academic papers, institutional archives, and software-specific collections. This fragmentation makes them difficult to discover, compare, and reuse. In a new arXiv preprint (2608.03491), Florian Frantzen and Michael T. Schaub from RWTH Aachen University present AHORN (Aachen Higher-Order Repository of Networks), a curated solution designed to solve this problem.

AHORN provides a standardized repository where each dataset entry connects a converted, ready-to-use dataset to its original source, metadata, citation guidance, conversion code, and full version history. The repository offers browsable and machine-readable discovery, revision-specific downloads, format validation, and exports for interoperable reuse across different tools and pipelines. The authors detail the repository architecture, curation workflow, access tools, and the coverage and limitations of the current catalog snapshot. This initiative directly addresses the pain point of dataset provenance and reproducibility, giving network science researchers a reliable, centralized hub for higher-order data—instead of hunting through fragmented sources.