TY - JOUR AB - Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system. Since the network of crowd intelligence is the future interconnected network system that takes on the features of large scale, openness and self-organization. The Digital-selfs in the network of crowd intelligence interact and cooperate with each other to finish transactions and achieve co-evolution eventually.Design/methodology/approach To realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection between cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system, the authors propose the rules and methods of projection from real world to the CrowdIntell Network. They build the mental model of the Digital-self including structure model and behavior model in four aspects: identity, provision, demand and connection, thus forming a theoretical mental model framework of Digital-self.Findings The mental model is excepted to lay a foundation for the theory of modeling and simulation in the research of crowd science and engineering.Originality/value This paper is the first one to propose the mental model framework and projection rules and methods of Digital-selfs in network of crowd intelligence, which lays a solid foundation for the theory of modeling, simulation, intelligent transactions, evolution and stability of CrowdIntell Network system, thus promoting the development of crowd science and engineering. VL - 3 IS - 2 SN - 2398-7294 DO - 10.1108/IJCS-01-2019-0006 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCS-01-2019-0006 AU - Wang Shipeng AU - Cui Lizhen AU - Liu Lei AU - Lu Xudong AU - Li Qingzhong PY - 2019 Y1 - 2019/01/01 TI - Projecting real world into CrowdIntell network: a methodology T2 - International Journal of Crowd Science PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 138 EP - 154 Y2 - 2024/09/19 ER -