  The deluge of network datasets demands a standard way to effectively and
succinctly summarize network datasets. Building on similar efforts to
standardize the documentation of models and datasets in machine learning, here
we propose network cards, short summaries of network datasets that can capture
not only the basic statistics of the network but also information about the
data construction process, provenance, ethical considerations, and other
metadata. In this paper, we lay out (1) the rationales and objectives for
network cards, (2) key elements that should be included in network cards, and
(3) example network cards to underscore their benefits across a variety of
research domains. We also provide a schema, templates, and a software package
for generating network cards.
