Ranking key nodes in complex networks by considering structural holes

Abstract

Structural hole nodes in complex networks play important roles in the network information diffusion. Unfortunately, most of the existing methods of ranking key nodes do not integrate structural hole nodes and other key nodes. According to the relevant research on structural hole theory as well as the key node ranking methods, network constraint coefficient, betweenness centrality, hierarchy, efficiently, network size, PageRank and clustering coefficient, 7 metrics are selected to rank the key nodes. Based on the 7 metrics, a ranking learning method based on ListNet is introduced to solve ranking key nodes by multi metrics. Comprehensive experiments are conducted based on different artificial networks and real complex networks. Experimental results with manual annotation show that the ranking method can comprehensively consider the structural hole nodes and other nodes with different important features. The ranking results on different networks are highly consistent with the manual ranking results. The spreading experiment results using signed to interference ratio propagation model show that SIR model can reach a maximum propagating ratio in a shorter propagating time initiated by TOP-K key nodes selected by our method than TOP-K key nodes selected by other methods.