Detecting the overlapping and hierarchical community structure in complex networks

By Andrea Lancichinetti, Santo Fortunato, János Kertész. 2008

1,934 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many networks in nature, society and technology are characterized by a mesoscopic level of organization, with groups of nodes forming tightly connected units, called communities or modules, that are only weakly linked to each other. Uncovering this community structure is one of the most important problems in the field of complex networks. Networks often show a hierarchical organization, with communities embedded within other communities; moreover, nodes can be shared between different communities. Here, we present the first algorithm that finds both overlapping communities and the hierarchical structure. The method is based on the local optimization of a fitness function. Community structure is revealed by peaks in the fitness histogram. The resolution can be tuned by a parameter enabling different hierarchical levels of organization to be investigated. Tests on real and artificial networks give excellent results.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2efae1bfccab8c45fed26065f602863cf7f4b842

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Biology

  1. Boleslaw K. Szymanski
  2. Jierui Xie
  3. Jure Leskovec
  4. Darko Hric
  5. Santo Fortunato
  6. M. A. Porter
  7. Tiago P. Peixoto
  8. Peter J. Mucha

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

  1. Santo Fortunato
  2. Darko Hric
  3. Jure Leskovec
  4. Boleslaw K. Szymanski
  5. Jierui Xie
  6. M. A. Porter
  7. Olaf Sporns
  8. Jaewon Yang

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