Many complex systems can be described as multiplex networks in which the same nodes can interact with one another in different layers, thus forming a set of interacting and co-evolving networks. Examples of such multiplex systems are social networks where people are involved in different types of relationships and interact through various forms of communication media. The ranking of nodes in multiplex networks is one of the most pressing and challenging tasks that research on complex networks is currently facing. When pairs of nodes can be connected through multiple links and in multiple layers, the ranking of nodes should necessarily reflect the importance of nodes in one layer as well as their importance in other interdependent layers. In this paper, we draw on the idea of biased random walks to define the Multiplex PageRank centrality measure in which the effects of the interplay between networks on the centrality of nodes are directly taken into account. In particular, depending on the intensity of the interaction between layers, we define the Additive, Multiplicative, Combined, and Neutral versions of Multiplex PageRank, and show how each version reflects the extent to which the importance of a node in one layer affects the importance the node can gain in another layer. We discuss these measures and apply them to an online multiplex social network. Findings indicate that taking the multiplex nature of the network into account helps uncover the emergence of rankings of nodes that differ from the rankings obtained from one single layer. Results provide support in favor of the salience of multiplex centrality measures, like Multiplex PageRank, for assessing the prominence of nodes embedded in multiple interacting networks, and for shedding a new light on structural properties that would otherwise remain undetected if each of the interacting networks were analyzed in isolation.
Recently it has been recognized that many complex social, technological and biological networks have a multilayer nature and can be described by multiplex networks. Multiplex networks are formed by a set of nodes connected by links having different connotations forming the different layers of the multiplex. Characterizing the centrality of the nodes in a multiplex network is a challenging task since the centrality of the node naturally depends on the importance associated to links of a certain type. Here we propose to assign to each node of a multiplex network a centrality called Functional Mu…
While PageRank has been extensively used to rank sport tournament participants (teams or individuals), its superiority over simpler ranking methods has been never clearly demonstrated. We use sports results from 18 major leagues to calibrate a state-of-art model for synthetic sports results. Model data are then used to assess the ranking performance of PageRank in a controlled setting. We find that PageRank outperforms the benchmark ranking by the number of wins only when a small fraction of all games have been played. Increased randomness in the data, such as intrinsic randomness of outcomes …
PageRank is arguably the most popular ranking algorithm which is being applied in real systems ranging from information to biological and infrastructure networks. Despite its outstanding popularity and broad use in different areas of science, the relation between the algorithm's efficacy and properties of the network on which it acts has not yet been fully understood. We study here PageRank's performance on a network model supported by real data, and show that realistic temporal effects make PageRank fail in individuating the most valuable nodes for a broad range of model parameters. Results o…
This paper describes our solution for WSDM Cup 2016. Ranking the query independent importance of scholarly articles is a critical and challenging task, due to the heterogeneity and dynamism of entities involved. Our approach is called Ensemble enabled Weighted PageRank (EWPR). To do this, we first propose Time-Weighted PageRank that extends PageRank by introducing a time decaying factor. We then develop an ensemble method to assemble the authorities of the heterogeneous entities involved in scholarly articles. We finally propose to use external data sources to further improve the ranking accur…
We study the time evolution of ranking and spectral properties of the Google matrix of English Wikipedia hyperlink network during years 2003 - 2011. The statistical properties of ranking of Wikipedia articles via PageRank and CheiRank probabilities, as well as the matrix spectrum, are shown to be stabilized for 2007 - 2011. A special emphasis is done on ranking of Wikipedia personalities and universities. We show that PageRank selection is dominated by politicians while 2DRank, which combines PageRank and CheiRank, gives more accent on personalities of arts. The Wikipedia PageRank of universit…
Ranking on large-scale graphs plays a fundamental role in many high-impact application domains, ranging from information retrieval, recommender systems, sports team management, biology to neuroscience and many more. PageRank, together with many of its random walk based variants, has become one of the most well-known and widely used algorithms, due to its mathematical elegance and the superior performance across a variety of application domains. Important as it might be, state-of-the-art lacks an intuitive way to explain the ranking results by PageRank (or its variants), e.g., why it thinks the…
The basic indicators of a researcher's productivity and impact are still the number of publications and their citation counts. These metrics are clear, straightforward, and easy to obtain. When a ranking of scholars is needed, for instance in grant, award, or promotion procedures, their use is the fastest and cheapest way of prioritizing some scientists over others. However, due to their nature, there is a danger of oversimplifying scientific achievements. Therefore, many other indicators have been proposed including the usage of the PageRank algorithm known for the ranking of webpages and its…
In this work we introduce and study a nonlocal version of the PageRank. In our approach, the random walker explores the graph using longer excursions than just moving between neighboring nodes. As a result, the corresponding ranking of the nodes, which takes into account a \textit{long-range interaction} between them, does not exhibit concentration phenomena typical of spectral rankings which take into account just local interactions. We show that the predictive value of the rankings obtained using our proposals is considerably improved on different real world problems.
Methods for ranking the importance of nodes in a network have a rich history in machine learning and across domains that analyze structured data. Recent work has evaluated these methods though the seed set expansion problem: given a subset $S$ of nodes from a community of interest in an underlying graph, can we reliably identify the rest of the community? We start from the observation that the most widely used techniques for this problem, personalized PageRank and heat kernel methods, operate in the space of landing probabilities of a random walk rooted at the seed set, ranking nodes according…
We propose an adiabatic quantum algorithm for generating a quantum pure state encoding of the PageRank vector, the most widely used tool in ranking the relative importance of internet pages. We present extensive numerical simulations which provide evidence that this algorithm can prepare the quantum PageRank state in a time which, on average, scales polylogarithmically in the number of webpages. We argue that the main topological feature of the underlying web graph allowing for such a scaling is the out-degree distribution. The top ranked $\log(n)$ entries of the quantum PageRank state can the…
In network science, there is often the need to sort the graph nodes. While the sorting strategy may be different, in general sorting is performed by exploiting the network structure. In particular, the metric PageRank has been used in the past decade in different ways to produce a ranking based on how many neighbors point to a specific node. PageRank is simple, easy to compute and effective in many applications, however it comes with a price: as PageRank is an application of the random walker, the arc weights need to be normalized. This normalization, while necessary, introduces a series of un…
The objective assessment of the prestige of an academic institution is a difficult and hotly debated task. In the last few years, different types of University Rankings have been proposed to quantify the excellence of different research institutions in the world. Albeit met with criticism in some cases, the relevance of university rankings is being increasingly acknowledged: indeed, rankings are having a major impact on the design of research policies, both at the institutional and governmental level. Yet, the debate on what rankings are {\em exactly} measuring is enduring. Here, we address th…
Higher-order networks are efficient representations of sequential data. Unlike the classic first-order network approach, they capture indirect dependencies between items composing the input sequences by the use of \textit{memory-nodes}. We focus in this study on the variable-order network model introduced in [Xu et al. (2016);Saebi et al. (2020)]. Authors suggested that random-walk-based mining tools can be directly applied to these networks. We discuss the case of the PageRank measure. We show the existence of a bias due to the distribution of the number of representations of the items. We pr…
Following recent developments in quantum PageRanking, we present a comparative analysis of discrete-time and continuous-time quantum-walk-based PageRank algorithms. For the discrete-time case, we introduce an alternative PageRank measure based on the maximum probabilities achieved by the walker on the nodes. We demonstrate that the required time of evolution does not scale significantly with increasing network size. We affirm that all three quantum PageRank measures considered here distinguish clearly between outerplanar hierarchical, scale-free, and Erdös-Rényi network types. Relative to clas…
High-centrality nodes have disproportionate influence on the behavior of a network; therefore controlling such nodes can efficiently steer the system to a desired state. Existing multiplex centrality measures typically rank nodes assuming the layers are qualitatively similar. Many real systems, however, are comprised of networks heterogeneous in nature, for example, social networks may have both agnostic and affiliative layers. Here, we use rank aggregation methods to identify intervention targets in multiplex networks when the structure, the dynamics, and our intervention goals are qualitativ…
Multiplex networks are generalized network structures that are able to describe networks in which the same set of nodes are connected by links that have different connotations. Multiplex networks are ubiquitous since they describe social, financial, engineering and biological networks as well. Extending our ability to analyze complex networks to multiplex network structures increases greatly the level of information that is possible to extract from Big Data. For these reasons characterizing the centrality of nodes in multiplex networks and finding new ways to solve challenging inference proble…
The Library of Babel, described by Jorge Luis Borges, stores an enormous amount of information. The Library exists {\it ab aeterno}. Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia, becomes a modern analogue of such a Library. Information retrieval and ranking of Wikipedia articles become the challenge of modern society. While PageRank highlights very well known nodes with many ingoing links, CheiRank highlights very communicative nodes with many outgoing links. In this way the ranking becomes two-dimensional. Using CheiRank and PageRank we analyze the properties of two-dimensional ranking of all Wikip…
Identifying the importance of nodes of complex networks is of interest to the research of Social Networks, Biological Networks etc.. Current researchers have proposed several measures or algorithms, such as betweenness, PageRank and HITS etc., to identify the node importance. However, these measures are based on different aspects of properties of nodes, and often conflict with the others. A reasonable, fair standard is needed for evaluating and comparing these algorithms. This paper develops a framework as the standard for ranking the importance of nodes. Four intuitive rules are suggested to …
It is widely recognized that citation counts for papers from different fields cannot be directly compared because different scientific fields adopt different citation practices. Citation counts are also strongly biased by paper age since older papers had more time to attract citations. Various procedures aim at suppressing these biases and give rise to new normalized indicators, such as the relative citation count. We use a large citation dataset from Microsoft Academic Graph and a new statistical framework based on the Mahalanobis distance to show that the rankings by well known indicators, i…
Random teleportation is a necessary evil for ranking and clustering directed networks based on random walks. Teleportation enables ergodic solutions, but the solutions must necessarily depend on the exact implementation and parametrization of the teleportation. For example, in the commonly used PageRank algorithm, the teleportation rate must trade off a heavily biased solution with a uniform solution. Here we show that teleportation to links rather than nodes enables a much smoother trade-off and effectively more robust results. We also show that, by not recording the teleportation steps of th…
In this paper some results about the controllability of spectral centrality in a complex network are presented. In particular, the inverse problem of designing an unweigthed graph with a prescribed centrality is considered, by showing that for every possible ranking eventually with ties, an unweighted directed/undirected complex network can be found whose PageRank or eigenvector centrality gives the ranking considered. Different families of networks are presented in order to analytically solve this problem either for directed and undirected graphs with and without loops.
Many popular measures used in social network analysis, including centrality, are based on the random walk. The random walk is a model of a stochastic process where a node interacts with one other node at a time. However, the random walk may not be appropriate for modeling social phenomena, including epidemics and information diffusion, in which one node may interact with many others at the same time, for example, by broadcasting the virus or information to its neighbors. To produce meaningful results, social network analysis algorithms have to take into account the nature of interactions betwe…
This paper describes the first results obtained by implementing a novel approach to rank vertices in a heterogeneous graph, based on the PageRank family of algorithms and applied here to the bipartite graph of papers and authors as a first evaluation of its relevance on real data samples. With this approach to evaluate research activities, the ranking of a paper/author depends on that of the papers/authors citing it/him or her. We compare the results against existing ranking methods (including methods which simply apply PageRank to the graph of papers or the graph of authors) through the analy…
Concepts and their mental associations influence how language is processed and used. Networks represent powerful models for exploring such cognitive system, known as mental lexicon. This study investigates lexicon robustness to progressive word failure with multiplex network attacks. The average lexicon of an adult English speaker is built by considering 16000 words connected through semantic free associations and phonological sound similarities. Progressive structural degradation is modelled as random and targeted attacks. Words with higher psycholinguistic features (e.g. frequency, length, a…
The massive presence of silent members in online communities, the so-called lurkers, has long attracted the attention of researchers in social science, cognitive psychology, and computer-human interaction. However, the study of lurking phenomena represents an unexplored opportunity of research in data mining, information retrieval and related fields. In this paper, we take a first step towards the formal specification and analysis of lurking in social networks. We address the new problem of lurker ranking and propose the first centrality methods specifically conceived for ranking lurkers in so…
Complex networks are formal frameworks capturing the interdependencies between the elements of large systems and databases. This formalism allows to use network navigation methods to rank the importance that each constituent has on the global organization of the system. A key example is Pagerank navigation which is at the core of the most used search engine of the World Wide Web. Inspired in this classical algorithm, we define a quantum navigation method providing a unique ranking of the elements of a network. We analyze the convergence of quantum navigation to the stationary rank of networks …
We investigate the behavior of the recently proposed quantum Google algorithm, or quantum PageRank, in large complex networks. Applying the quantum algorithm to a part of the real World Wide Web, we find that the algorithm is able to univocally reveal the underlying scale-free topology of the network and to clearly identify and order the most relevant nodes (hubs) of the graph according to their importance in the network structure. Moreover, our results show that the quantum PageRank algorithm generically leads to changes in the hierarchy of nodes. In addition, as compared to its classical cou…
[Background]Discovering key nodes plays a significant role in Social Network Analysis(SNA). Effective and accurate mining of key nodes promotes more successful applications in fields like advertisement and recommendation. [Methods] With focus on the temporal and categorical property of users' actions - when did they re-tweet or reply a message, as well as their social intimacy measured by structural embeddings, we designed a more sensitive PageRank-like algorithm to accommodate the growing and changing social network in the pursue of mining key nodes. [Results] Compared with our baseline PageR…
We formulate and propose an algorithm (MultiRank) for the ranking of nodes and layers in large multiplex networks. MultiRank takes into account the full multiplex network structure of the data and exploits the dual nature of the network in terms of nodes and layers. The proposed centrality of the layers (influences) and the centrality of the nodes are determined by a coupled set of equations. The basic idea consists in assigning more centrality to nodes that receive links from highly influential layers and from already central nodes. The layers are more influential if highly central nodes are …
Recent research on finding important intermediate nodes in a network suspected to contain criminal activity is highly dependent on network centrality values. Betweenness centrality, for example, is widely used to rank the nodes that act as brokers in the shortest paths connecting all source and all the end nodes in a network. However both the shortest path node betweenness and the linearly scaled betweenness can only show rankings for all the nodes in a network. In this paper we explore the mathematical concept of pair-dependency on intermediate nodes, adapting the concept to criminal relation…
How different cultures evaluate a person? Is an important person in one culture is also important in the other culture? We address these questions via ranking of multilingual Wikipedia articles. With three ranking algorithms based on network structure of Wikipedia, we assign ranking to all articles in 9 multilingual editions of Wikipedia and investigate general ranking structure of PageRank, CheiRank and 2DRank. In particular, we focus on articles related to persons, identify top 30 persons for each rank among different editions and analyze distinctions of their distributions over activity fie…
A deformation of the combinatorial Laplacian is proposed, consisting in a generalization of several existing Laplacians. As particular cases of this construction, the dilation Laplacians are shown to be useful tools for ranking in directed networks of pairwise comparisons. The eigenvector with the smallest eigenvalue of the dilation Laplacians has the same sign on any connected graph, and provides directly a ranking score of its nodes. The ranking method, phrased in terms of a group synchronization problem, is applied to artificial and real data, and its performance is compared with other rank…
We present Wikipedia Ranking of World Universities (WRWU) based on analysis of networks of 24 Wikipedia editions collected in May 2017. With PageRank and CheiRank algorithms we determine ranking of universities averaged over cultural views of these editions. The comparison with the Shanghai ranking gives overlap of 60% for top 100 universities showing that WRWU gives more significance to their historical development. We show that the new reduced Google matrix algorithm allows to determine interactions between leading universities on a scale of ten centuries. This approach also determines the i…
To rank nodes in quasi-hierarchical networks of social nature, it is necessary to carry out a detailed analysis of the network and evaluate the results obtained according to all the given criteria and identify the most influential nodes. Existing ranking algorithms in the overwhelming majority estimate such networks in general, which does not allow to clearly determine the influence of nodes among themselves. In the course of the study, an analysis of the results of known algorithms for ranking the nodes of HITS, PageRank and compares the obtained data with the expert evaluation of the network…
Understanding the architectural subtleties of ecological networks, believed to confer them enhanced stability and robustness, is a subject of outmost relevance. Mutualistic interactions have been profusely studied and their corresponding bipartite networks, such as plant-pollinator networks, have been reported to exhibit a characteristic "nested" structure. Assessing the importance of any given species in mutualistic networks is a key task when evaluating extinction risks and possible cascade effects. Inspired in a recently introduced algorithm --similar in spirit to Google's PageRank but with…
When we search online for content, we are constantly exposed to rankings. For example, web search results are presented as a ranking, and online bookstores often show us lists of best-selling books. While popularity-based ranking algorithms (like Google's PageRank) have been extensively studied in previous works, we still lack a clear understanding of their potential systemic consequences. In this work, we fill this gap by introducing a new model of network growth that allows us to compare the properties of the networks generated under the influence of different ranking algorithms. We show tha…
Characterizing the importances (i.e., centralities) of nodes in social, biological, and technological networks is a core topic in both network science and data science. We present a linear-algebraic framework that generalizes eigenvector-based centralities, including PageRank and hub/authority scores, to provide a common framework for two popular classes of multilayer networks: multiplex networks (which have layers that encode different types of relationships) and temporal networks (in which the relationships change over time). Our approach involves the study of joint, marginal, and conditiona…
We consider all Test matches played between 1877 and 2010 and One Day International (ODI) matches played between 1971 and 2010. We form directed and weighted networks of teams and also of their captains. The success of a team (or captain) is determined by the 'quality' of wins and not on the number of wins alone. We apply the diffusion based PageRank algorithm on the networks to access the importance of wins and rank the teams and captains respectively. Our analysis identifies {\it Australia} as the best team in both forms of cricket $-$ Test and ODI. {\it Steve Waugh} is identified as the bes…
A detailed analysis of matches played in the sport of Snooker during the period 1968-2020 is used to calculate a directed and weighted dominance network based upon the corresponding results. We consider a ranking procedure based upon the well-studied PageRank algorithm that incorporates details of not only the number of wins a player has had over their career but also the quality of opponent faced in these wins. Through this study we find that John Higgins is the highest performing Snooker player of all time with Ronnie O'Sullivan appearing in second place. We demonstrate how this approach can…
To account for strong aging characteristics of citation networks, we modify Google's PageRank algorithm by initially distributing random surfers exponentially with age, in favor of more recent publications. The output of this algorithm, which we call CiteRank, is interpreted as approximate traffic to individual publications in a simple model of how researchers find new information. We develop an analytical understanding of traffic flow in terms of an RPA-like model and optimize parameters of our algorithm to achieve the best performance. The results are compared for two rather different citati…
Complex networks have emerged as a simple yet powerful framework to represent and analyze a wide range of complex systems. The problem of ranking the nodes and the edges in complex networks is critical for a broad range of real-world problems because it affects how we access online information and products, how success and talent are evaluated in human activities, and how scarce resources are allocated by companies and policymakers, among others. This calls for a deep understanding of how existing ranking algorithms perform, and which are their possible biases that may impair their effectivene…
Though algorithms promise many benefits including efficiency, objectivity and accuracy, they may also introduce or amplify biases. Here we study two well-known algorithms, namely PageRank and Who-to-Follow (WTF), and show to what extent their ranks produce inequality and inequity when applied to directed social networks. To this end, we propose a directed network model with preferential attachment and homophily (DPAH) and demonstrate the influence of network structure on the rank distributions of these algorithms. Our main findings suggest that (i) inequality is positively correlated with ineq…
The World-Wide Web (WWW) is characterized by a strong community structure in which groups of webpages (e.g. those devoted to a common topic or belonging to the same organization) are densely interconnected by hyperlinks. We study how such network architecture affects the average Google rank of individual communities. Using a mean-field approximation, we quantify how the average Google rank of community webpages depends on the degree to which it is isolated from the rest of the world in both incoming and outgoing directions, and $α$ -- the only intrinsic parameter of Google's PageRank algorithm…
Nodes can be ranked according to their relative importance within the network. Ranking algorithms based on random walks are particularly useful because they connect topological and diffusive properties of the network. Previous methods based on random walks, as for example the PageRank, have focused on static structures. However, several realistic networks are indeed dynamic, meaning that their structure changes in time. In this paper, we propose a centrality measure for temporal networks based on random walks which we call TempoRank. While in a static network, the stationary density of the ran…
Citations between scientific papers and related bibliometric indices, such as the $h$-index for authors and the impact factor for journals, are being increasingly used - often in controversial ways - as quantitative tools for research evaluation. Yet, a fundamental research question remains still open: to which extent do quantitative metrics capture the significance of scientific works? We analyze the network of citations among the $449,935$ papers published by the American Physical Society (APS) journals between 1893 and 2009, and focus on the comparison of metrics built on the citation count…
By adopting a citation-based recursive ranking method for patents the evolution of new fields of technology can be traced. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the laser / inkjet printer technology emerged from the recombination of two existing technologies: sequential printing and static image production. The dynamics of the citations coming from the different "precursor" classes illuminates the mechanism of the emergence of new fields and give the possibility to make predictions about future technological development. For the patent network the optimal value of the PageRank damping factor i…
In this paper we extend the concept of Competitivity Graph to compare series of rankings with ties ({\em partial rankings}). We extend the usual method used to compute Kendall's coefficient for two partial rankings to the concept of evolutive Kendall's coefficient for a series of partial rankings. The theoretical framework consists of a four-layer multiplex network. Regarding the treatment of ties, our approach allows to define a tie between two values when they are close {\em enough}, depending on a threshold. We show an application using data from the Spanish Stock Market; we analyse the ser…
Many systems, ranging from biological and engineering systems to social systems, can be modeled as directed networks, with links representing directed interaction between two nodes. To assess the importance of a node in a directed network, various centrality measures based on different criteria have been proposed. However, calculating the centrality of a node is often difficult because of the overwhelming size of the network or the incomplete information about the network. Thus, developing an approximation method for estimating centrality measures is needed. In this study, we focus on modular …
Wikipedia is a huge global repository of human knowledge, that can be leveraged to investigate interwinements between cultures. With this aim, we apply methods of Markov chains and Google matrix, for the analysis of the hyperlink networks of 24 Wikipedia language editions, and rank all their articles by PageRank, 2DRank and CheiRank algorithms. Using automatic extraction of people names, we obtain the top 100 historical figures, for each edition and for each algorithm. We investigate their spatial, temporal, and gender distributions in dependence of their cultural origins. Our study demonstrat…
Determining the relative importance of nodes in directed networks is important in, for example, ranking websites, publications, and sports teams, and for understanding signal flows in systems biology. A prevailing centrality measure in this respect is the PageRank. In this work, we focus on another class of centrality derived from the Laplacian of the network. We extend the Laplacian-based centrality, which has mainly been applied to strongly connected networks, to the case of general directed networks such that we can quantitatively compare arbitrary nodes. Toward this end, we adopt the idea …
We review the main findings on the ranking capabilities of the recently proposed Quantum PageRank algorithm (G.D. Paparo et al., Sci. Rep. 2, 444 (2012) and G.D. Paparo et al., Sci. Rep. 3, 2773 (2013)) applied to large complex networks. The algorithm has been shown to identify unambiguously the underlying topology of the network and to be capable of clearly highlighting the structure of secondary hubs of networks. Furthermore, it can resolve the degeneracy in importance of the low-lying part of the list of rankings. Examples of applications include real-world instances from the WWW, which typ…
Complex networks are characterized by heterogeneous distributions of the degree of nodes, which produce a large diversification of the roles of the nodes within the network. Several centrality measures have been introduced to rank nodes based on their topological importance within a graph. Here we review and compare centrality measures based on spectral properties of graph matrices. We shall focus on PageRank, eigenvector centrality and the hub/authority scores of HITS. We derive simple relations between the measures and the (in)degree of the nodes, in some limits. We also compare the rankings…
