AutiHub: Why This Hub?

AutiHub emerged from the convergence of two interests that have played an important role in Cédric Detienne’s work for several years: the participation of autistic people in areas that directly concern them, and the development of databases that make it possible to document, connect, and explore dispersed information.

These two interests may seem different. Yet they come together around the same question: how can information be made visible, organized, and accessible in ways that allow us to better examine the place of autistic people in the production and circulation of knowledge about autism?

Development of AutiHub began in July 2026, with the aim of having a first operational version ready for the initial projects in September 2026. The Hub was designed as an evolving workspace: a place where data, tools, verification interfaces, and opportunities for contribution can gradually be brought together.

Projects that needed a shared space

Over the past few years, several particularly intense areas of interest have led to data collections, bibliographies, lists of authors, analyses, and tools.

Some were directly concerned with the participation of autistic people in research: who produces knowledge about autism? To what extent do autistic people participate in research that concerns them? How is this participation described in scientific publications?

Others were more closely related to the circulation of knowledge: which studies are cited in public spaces devoted to autism? Can we accurately identify the publications that a person or organization is referring to? Can large collections of publications, bibliographic references, or public posts be analyzed without losing their context?

Another area of interest concerned the structure of the data itself: how can databases be built that connect people, publications, citations, projects, and their sources?

These different projects existed, or could have been developed, separately. What they lacked was a shared space where they could be documented, shared, connected with one another and, above all, opened to contributions from other people.

This collaborative dimension is central. Developing databases alone can easily become a very isolated activity. Putting these projects online makes it possible instead to turn them into shared resources: people can consult them, report errors, suggest data, take part in verification, or contribute directly to some of the projects.

AutiHub also emerged from this desire to transform several individual interests into opportunities for collaboration.

Autidacts, a first step

The Autidacts.org website was a first experiment.

Among other things, it made it possible to bring together resources about autism and gradually became the home of a much more structured project focused on scientific publications written or co-written by autistic people.

This experience was useful: it showed that public resources could be built gradually, enriched over time, and opened to contributions.

It also revealed the limitations of the structure being used. The site had not originally been designed as a platform bringing together several databases and several independent research or documentation projects. Adding new tools, establishing complex relationships between data, or developing specific interfaces became increasingly difficult.

Autidacts could have continued to evolve, but it became increasingly clear that it would be preferable to start again with an architecture designed from the outset for this kind of work.

Starting from scratch

The possibility of developing a new website with Django, combined with the use of an advanced coding assistant such as Codex, changed what was technically feasible.

Rather than gradually adapting an existing structure, the Hub’s lead developer chose to build a new application from the ground up, with an organization primarily centered on data.

AutiHub is therefore not conceived simply as a collection of pages to browse. Behind the visible pages are interconnected objects: people, scientific publications, bibliographic references, sources, corpora, projects, and different types of analyses.

This structure makes it possible for projects to evolve without being locked into isolated pages. The same reference, person, or source can be used in several contexts while retaining its traceability.

A Hub rather than a single-purpose website

The name AutiHub reflects this orientation. The aim is not only to publish content about autism, but to build a space where several projects can coexist, interact, and share a common infrastructure.

Some projects focus on scientific publications involving autistic people. Others focus on documentation, scientific citation analysis, publication corpora, public posts related to autism research, or the ways autistic people’s participation is described in scientific work.

The Hub is intended to connect these projects without merging them into a single object. Each project keeps its own aims, methods, and limitations, while benefiting from shared tools: bibliography management, author pages, verification systems, translations, source tracking, administrative interfaces, and contribution workflows.

An evolving tool

AutiHub is still under development. The first months are being used to stabilize the structure, improve data imports, clarify public pages, strengthen verification mechanisms, and prepare the gradual opening of the first projects.

This development is taking place step by step. Some pages are already available, while others will be expanded or reorganized. Errors may still be present in the data, and correcting them is part of the expected operation of the site.

The aim is to build a tool that is rigorous enough to be useful, while remaining open enough to be corrected, discussed, and improved over time.

AutiHub is therefore at once a website, a database, a set of tools, and a collaborative space under construction.