Mapping change in large networks

Change is a fundamental ingredient of interaction patterns in biology, technology, the economy, and science itself: Interactions within and between organisms change; transportation patterns by air, land, and sea all change; the global financial flow changes; and the frontiers of scientific research...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2010-01, Vol.5 (1), p.e8694-e8694
Main Authors: Rosvall, Martin, Bergstrom, Carl T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Cartography
change
Citation analysis
Cluster Analysis
Clustering
Computer Science/Information Technology
Mapping
Markov analysis
Mathematics/Mathematical Computing
Metabolism
Methods
Models, Theoretical
Nervous system
Networks
Neurosciences
Physics/Interdisciplinary Physics
Resampling
Scientific research
Social networks
Social research
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Change is a fundamental ingredient of interaction patterns in biology, technology, the economy, and science itself: Interactions within and between organisms change; transportation patterns by air, land, and sea all change; the global financial flow changes; and the frontiers of scientific research change. Networks and clustering methods have become important tools to comprehend instances of these large-scale structures, but without methods to distinguish between real trends and noisy data, these approaches are not useful for studying how networks change. Only if we can assign significance to the partitioning of single networks can we distinguish meaningful structural changes from random fluctuations. Here we show that bootstrap resampling accompanied by significance clustering provides a solution to this problem. To connect changing structures with the changing function of networks, we highlight and summarize the significant structural changes with alluvial diagrams and realize de Solla Price's vision of mapping change in science: studying the citation pattern between about 7000 scientific journals over the past decade, we find that neuroscience has transformed from an interdisciplinary specialty to a mature and stand-alone discipline.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0008694