Identifying influential spreaders in complex networks is a crucial problem which relates to wide applications. Many methods based on the global information such as $k$-shell and PageRank have been applied to rank spreaders. However, most of related previous works overwhelmingly focus on the number of paths for propagation, while whether the paths are diverse enough is usually overlooked. Generally, the spreading ability of a node might not be strong if its propagation depends on one or two paths while the other paths are dead ends. In this Letter, we introduced the concept of path diversity and find that it can largely improve the ranking accuracy. We further propose a local method combining the information of path number and path diversity to identify influential nodes in complex networks. This method is shown to outperform many well-known methods in both undirected and directed networks. Moreover, the efficiency of our method makes it possible to be applied to very large systems.

Path diversity improves the identification of influential spreaders

Critical nodes of complex networks play a crucial role in effective information spreading. There are many methods have been proposed to identify critical nodes in complex networks, ranging from centralities of nodes to diffusion-based processes. Most of them try to find what kind of structure will make the node more influential. In this paper, inspired by the concept of graph convolutional networks(GCNs), we convert the critical node identification problem in complex networks into a regression problem. Considering adjacency matrices of networks and convolutional neural networks(CNNs), a simply yet effectively method named R C N N is presented to identify critical nodes with the best spreading ability. In this approach, we can generate feature matrix for each node and use a convolutional neural network to train and predict the influence of nodes. Experimental results on nine synthetic and fifteen real networks show that under Susceptible–Infected–Recovered (SIR) model, R C N N outperforms the traditional benchmark methods on identifying critical nodes under spreading dynamic.

Identifying critical nodes in complex networks via graph convolutional networks

Identifying influential nodes in complex networks: Effective distance gravity model

InfGCN: Identifying Influential Nodes in Complex Networks with Graph Convolutional Networks

Identification of Influential nodes in complex networks is challenging due to the largely scaled data and network sizes, and frequently changing behaviors of the current topologies. Various application scenarios like disease transmission and immunization, software virus infection and disinfection, increased product exposure and rumor suppression, etc., are applicable domains in the corresponding networks where identification of influential nodes is crucial. Though a lot of approaches are proposed to address the challenges, most of the relevant research concentrates only on single and limited aspects of the problem. Therefore, we propose Global Structure Model (GSM) for influential nodes identification that considers self-influence as well as emphasizes on global influence of the node in the network. We applied GSM and utilized Susceptible Infected Recovered model to evaluate its efficiency. Moreover, various standard algorithms such as Betweenness Centrality, Profit Leader, H-Index, Closeness Centrality, Hyperlink Induced Topic Search, Improved K-shell Hybrid, Density Centrality, Extended Cluster Coefficient Ranking Measure, and Gravity Index Centrality are employed as baseline benchmarks to evaluate the performance of GSM. Similarly, we used seven real-world and two synthetic multi-typed complex networks along-with different well-known datasets for experiments. Results analysis indicates that GSM outperformed the baseline algorithms in identification of influential node(s).

/pdf/identification-of-nodes-influence-based-on-global-structure-45b09lhta2.pdf

Identification of nodes influence based on global structure model in complex networks.

Identifying a set of influential nodes is an important topic in complex networks which plays a crucial role in many applications, such as market advertising, rumor controlling, and predicting valuable scientific publications. In regard to this, researchers have developed algorithms from simple degree methods to all kinds of sophisticated approaches. However, a more robust and practical algorithm is required for the task. In this paper, we propose the EnRenew algorithm aimed to identify a set of influential nodes via information entropy. Firstly, the information entropy of each node is calculated as initial spreading ability. Then, select the node with the largest information entropy and renovate its l-length reachable nodes' spreading ability by an attenuation factor, repeat this process until specific number of influential nodes are selected. Compared with the best state-of-the-art benchmark methods, the performance of proposed algorithm improved by 21.1%, 7.0%, 30.0%, 5.0%, 2.5%, and 9.0% in final affected scale on CEnew, Email, Hamster, Router, Condmat, and Amazon network, respectively, under the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) simulation model. The proposed algorithm measures the importance of nodes based on information entropy and selects a group of important nodes through dynamic update strategy. The impressive results on the SIR simulation model shed light on new method of node mining in complex networks for information spreading and epidemic prevention.

Chungu Guo

Papers

Influential Nodes Identification in Complex Networks via Information Entropy