[...] Lorcan Dempsey described interoperability as “recombinant potential”. This phrase epitomizes the potential for interoperability mechanisms and architectures to integrate heterogeneous information across the internet commons. As articulated by Paul Ginsparg, information integration provides the basis for a rich “knowledge space” built on top of the basic web “data layer”. This knowledge layer is composed of value-added services that process and offer abstracted information and knowledge, rather than returning documents (in the manner of most current web search engines).