(5 Oct 2026) The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched the NSF Open Knowledge Network (NSF OKN), a national open-data infrastructure designed to connect knowledge graphs and make data more accessible, interoperable, and machine-readable for research, government, and other applications.
The network is publicly available at okn.us and currently links 43 knowledge graphs containing tens of billions of connected facts spanning areas including health, the environment, justice, manufacturing, and national security.
NSF OKN provides a structured and verifiable data layer that can complement artificial intelligence systems by providing access to source information, attribution, and structured knowledge. The network is designed to give AI systems an interoperable and auditable representation of information that can be used alongside conventional AI models.
The initiative addresses challenges associated with datasets that are distributed across separate systems and are not always interoperable or prepared for machine-based applications. By connecting federal and public datasets, NSF OKN is intended to make information more discoverable and usable across different fields.
NSF has identified AI-ready datasets and next-generation scientific data infrastructure as areas of investment as part of its broader efforts to support AI-enabled scientific discovery. The Open Knowledge Network represents one implementation of this approach by providing infrastructure for connecting and querying data across domains.
The press release in full is here.
