The Persistent Graph of Intertwingularity – building a true information network

Overview
In his seminal work, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Ted Nelson talked about how everything is intertwingled, the deep interconnectedness of information. As we start to build a world that is more and more connected digitally, we also create information structures that are similarly connected. How do we ensure that the underlying structures are sound and complete? How do we now go about building on top of this primary network? What assumptions can we make as we look to the future of a deeply intertwingled information society

Fabric
Taking persistent identifiers as our example, let’s examine the maturity and sustainability of the current infrastructure. The information contained in registries and their rich underlying metadata allows for connections to be expressed as works (publications, datasets and digital humanities via DOI) contain details of authors (ORCID), their funding (Grant ID), organizations and affiliations (ROR), whilst project information via RAiD captures a declarative narrative providing ordering and context. Care must be taken when using this surface though, as there is not reliable completeness – for example, although most researchers have heard of ORCID and would have an ORCID iD, many would still not maintain its currency and so work on ensuring automatic crosswalking of information and increasing reliability is still essential.

Architecture
With these maturing fabrics of connectivity, with PID nodes and underlying connections embodied in metadata and event streams, second order systems are being built on top of this landscape. They extract value from the relationships embedded in the fabric. In the case of the Jisc Community ORCID Dashboard project by using those connections to supplement existing information and supply a richer, more complete view of one particular question. In the case of the PID graphs by using the connections and events that can be recorded and inferred to give a richer view of the wider open science landscape