Concentric characterization and classification of complex network nodes: Application to an institutional collaboration network

Luciano da Fontoura Costa, Marilza A. Rodrigues Tognetti and Filipi Nascimento Silva

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2008, vol. 387, issue 24, 6201-6214

Abstract: Differently from theoretical scale-free networks, most real networks present multi-scale behavior, with nodes structured in different types of functional groups and communities. While the majority of approaches for classification of nodes in a complex network has relied on local measurements of the topology/connectivity around each node, valuable information about node functionality can be obtained by concentric (or hierarchical) measurements. This paper extends previous methodologies based on concentric measurements, by studying the possibility of using agglomerative clustering methods, in order to obtain a set of functional groups of nodes, considering particular institutional collaboration network nodes, including various known communities (departments of the University of São Paulo). Among the interesting obtained findings, we emphasize the scale-free nature of the network obtained, as well as identification of different patterns of authorship emerging from different areas (e.g. human and exact sciences). Another interesting result concerns the relatively uniform distribution of hubs along concentric levels, contrariwise to the non-uniform pattern found in theoretical scale-free networks such as the BA model.

Keywords: Complex networks; Complex systems; Network connectivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:387:y:2008:i:24:p:6201-6214

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2008.06.034

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