Link Prediction Problem Research Articles

A recommendation approach of scientific non-patent literature on the basis of heterogeneous information network

In the procedure of exploring science-technology linkages, non-patent literature (NPL) in patents, particularly scientific NPL, is considered to signal the relatedness between the developed technology and the cited science. However, many prior art search tools may not be powered with the cross-collection recommendation technique, or have limited cross-collection recommendation capabilities. In this paper, we present an approach to recommend scientific NPL for a focal patent on the basis of heterogeneous information network. This study views this cross-collection recommendation problem as a link prediction problem on the basis of meta-path counting approach. Extensive experiments on DrugBank dataset in the pharmaceutical field indicate that our approach is feasible and effective. This work provides a novel perspective on scientific NPL recommendation for a focal patent and opens up further possibilities for the linkages between science and technology. Nevertheless, more experiments in other fields are required to verify the recommended effects of the approach proposed in this study.

Predicting drug-target interactions by measuring confidence with consistent causal neighborhood interventions

Predicting drug-target interactions (DTI) is a crucial stage in drug discovery and development. Understanding the interaction between drugs and targets is essential for pinpointing the specific relationship between drug molecules and targets, akin to solving a link prediction problem using information technology. While knowledge graph (KG) and knowledge graph embedding (KGE) methods have been rapid advancements and demonstrated impressive performance in drug discovery, they often lack authenticity and accuracy in identifying DTI. This leads to increased misjudgment rates and reduced efficiency in drug development. To address these challenges, our focus lies in refining the accuracy of DTI prediction models through KGE, with a specific emphasis on causal intervention confidence measures (CI). These measures aim to assess triplet scores, enhancing the precision of the predictions. Comparative experiments conducted on three datasets and utilizing 9 KGE models reveal that our proposed confidence measure approach via causal intervention, significantly improves the accuracy of DTI link prediction compared to traditional approaches. Furthermore, our experimental analysis delves deeper into the embedding of intervention values, offering valuable insights for guiding the design and development of subsequent drug development experiments. As a result, our predicted outcomes serve as valuable guidance in the pursuit of more efficient drug development processes.

A graph neural network-based teammate recommendation model for knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing

Current research on teammate recommendation decision in various fields is difficult to apply to knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing, which needs to make a trade-off between solver willingness and team performance. To weigh the bilateral benefits between the solver and the seeker, this paper proposes a teammate recommendation model based on multi-criteria decision-making of solver willingness and team performance. The prediction of willingness to team up is driven by explicit competitiveness, teammate familiarity, and social capital. By adapting the graph-based deep learning model, we transform the solver performance prediction into a bipartite network link prediction problem. We jointly compute the solver willingness and team performance to make the final recommendation decisions. The experimental results based on Kaggle data prove the effectiveness of our method. The findings provide managerial implications and a practical reference for the design and operation of teammate recommender systems.

TransFOL: A Logical Query Model for Complex Relational Reasoning in Drug-Drug Interaction.

Predicting drug-drug interaction (DDI) plays a crucial role in drug recommendation and discovery. However, wet lab methods are prohibitively expensive and time-consuming due to drug interactions. In recent years, deep learning methods have gained widespread use in drug reasoning. Although these methods have demonstrated effectiveness, they can only predict the interaction between a drug pair and do not contain any other information. However, DDI is greatly affected by various other biomedical factors (such as the dose of the drug). As a result, it is challenging to apply them to more complex and meaningful reasoning tasks. Therefore, this study regards DDI as a link prediction problem on knowledge graphs and proposes a DDI prediction model based on Cross-Transformer and Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) in first-order logical query form, TransFOL. In the model, a biomedical query graph is first built to learn the embedding representation. Subsequently, an enhancement module is designed to aggregate the semantics of entities and relations. Cross-Transformer is used for encoding to obtain semantic information between nodes, and GCN is used to gather neighbour information further and predict inference results. To evaluate the performance of TransFOL on common DDI tasks, we conduct experiments on two benchmark datasets. The experimental results indicate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods on traditional DDI tasks. Additionally, we introduce different biomedical information in the other two experiments to make the settings more realistic. Experimental results verify the strong drug reasoning ability and generalization of TransFOL in complex settings.

Computational drug repositioning with attention walking

Drug repositioning aims to identify new therapeutic indications for approved medications. Recently, the importance of computational drug repositioning has been highlighted because it can reduce the costs, development time, and risks compared to traditional drug discovery. Most approaches in this area use networks for systematic analysis. Inferring drug-disease associations is then defined as a link prediction problem in a heterogeneous network composed of drugs and diseases. In this article, we present a novel method of computational drug repositioning, named drug repositioning with attention walking (DRAW). DRAW proceeds as follows: first, a subgraph enclosing the target link for prediction is extracted. Second, a graph convolutional network captures the structural features of the labeled nodes in the subgraph. Third, the transition probabilities are computed using attention mechanisms and converted into random walk profiles. Finally, a multi-layer perceptron takes random walk profiles and predicts whether a target link exists. As an experiment, we constructed two heterogeneous networks with drug-drug similarities based on chemical structures and anatomical therapeutic chemical classification (ATC) codes. Using 10-fold cross-validation, DRAW achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.903 and outperformed state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, we demonstrated the results of case studies for selected drugs and diseases to further confirm the capability of DRAW to predict drug-disease associations.

Social Behavior Analysis in Exclusive Enterprise Social Networks by FastHAND

There is an emerging trend in the Chinese automobile industries that automakers are introducing exclusive enterprise social networks (EESNs) to expand sales and provide after-sale services. The traditional online social networks (OSNs) and enterprise social networks (ESNs), such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and Yammer, are ingeniously designed to facilitate unregulated communications among equal individuals. However, users in EESNs are naturally social stratified, consisting of both enterprise staffs and customers. In addition, the motivation to operate EESNs can be quite complicated, including providing customer services and facilitating communication among enterprise staffs. As a result, the social behaviors in EESNs can be quite different from those in OSNs and ESNs. In this work, we aim to analyze the social behaviors in EESNs. We consider the Chinese car manufacturer NIO as a typical example of EESNs and provide the following contributions. First, we formulate the social behavior analysis in EESNs as a link prediction problem in heterogeneous social networks. Second, to analyze this link prediction problem, we derive plentiful user features and build multiple meta-path graphs for EESNs. Third, we develop a novel Fast (H)eterogeneous graph (A)ttention (N)etwork algorithm for (D)irected graphs (FastHAND) to predict directed social links among users in EESNs. This algorithm introduces feature group attention at the node-level and uses an edge sampling algorithm over directed meta-path graphs to reduce the computation cost. By conducting various experiments on the NIO community data, we demonstrate the predictive power of our proposed FastHAND method. The experimental results also verify our intuitions about social affinity propagation in EESNs.

Node2Vec and Machine Learning: A Powerful Duo for Link Prediction in Social Network

Link prediction in social networks is a challenging task that attempts to uncover hidden linkages and forecast future connections. The link prediction problem is addressed in this research article by utilizing the capabilities of Node2Vec and machine learning algorithms. To learn high-dimensional node representations that capture both local and global network structures, the Node2Vec technique is used. Then, in order to forecast potential connections, these node embedding’s are put into various machine learning models. Two real-world social network datasets are used to test the suggested methodology, and the findings show a considerable improvement in link prediction accuracy. It achieves a deeper comprehension of the hidden relationships in social networks by fusing the semantic richness of Node2Vec embedding’s with the predictive powers of machine learning methods. The results of this study extend link prediction approaches in social networks by revealing hidden ties and providing insightful predictions for upcoming connections. The suggested method indicates the potential for real-world applications in a number of fields, including recommender systems, targeted advertising, and social influence studies.

A deep contrastive framework for unsupervised temporal link prediction in dynamic networks

In dynamic networks, temporal link prediction aims to predict the appearance and disappearance of links in future snapshots based on the network structure we have observed. It also plays a crucial role in network analysis and predicting the behavior of the dynamic system. However, most existing studies only focus on supervised temporal link prediction problems, i.e., taking part of the links in future snapshots as supervised information. The ones that can solve the unsupervised temporal link prediction problem are mainly based on matrix decomposition, which lack the capability to automatically extract nonlinear spatial and temporal features from dynamic networks. The most challenging part of this problem is to extract the inherent evolution of the patterns hidden in dynamic networks in unsupervised ways. Inspired by the application and achievement of contrastive learning in network representation learning, we propose a novel deep Contrastive framework for unsupervised Temporal Link Prediction (CTLP). Our framework is based on a deep encoder-decoder architecture, which can capture the nonlinear structure and temporal features automatically and can predict future links of subsequent snapshots of dynamic networks in an unsupervised manner. Besides, CTLP could handle the multi-step temporal link prediction problem of dynamic networks through attenuation modeling across the snapshots. Extensive experiments on temporal link prediction show that our CTLP framework significantly outperforms state-of-the-art unsupervised methods, and even outperforms the supervised methods in some cases.

Graph neural network‐based attack prediction for communication‐based train control systems

AbstractThe Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) have emerged as one of the key security challenges to industrial control systems. APTs are complex multi‐step attacks, and they are naturally diverse and complex. Therefore, it is important to comprehend the behaviour of APT attackers and anticipate the upcoming attack actions. GNN‐AP is proposed, a framework utilising an alert log to predict potential attack targets. Firstly, GNN‐AP uses causality to eliminate confounding elements from the alert dataset and then uses an encoder‐decoder model to reconstruct an attack scenario graph. Based on the chronological characteristics of APT attacks, GNN‐AP identifies APT attack sequences from attack scenario graphs and integrates these attack sequences with communication‐based train control (CBTC) devices topology information to construct an Attack‐Target Graph. Based on the attack‐target graph, a graph neural network approach is used to identify the attack intent and transforms the attack prediction problem into a link prediction problem that predicts the connected edges of the attack and target nodes. The simulation results obtained using DARPA data show that the proposed method can improve the comparison methods by 4% of accuracy in terms of prediction. Furthermore, the method was applied to the CBTC system dataset with a prediction accuracy of 88%, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed method for industrial control systems.

Link prediction in multilayer networks using weighted reliable local random walk algorithm

The expansion of online social networks has led to attracting a significant number of users. Meanwhile, the analysis of these networks has raised new perspectives and challenges due to the large amount of information. One of these challenges in the analysis of social networks is the problem of link prediction. The purpose of this problem is to find links that have not yet been observed, but may exist in the future. There are many solutions for link prediction on monoplex networks. However, many real social networks model communication in multiple layers. In recent years, link prediction in multilayer social networks has attracted the attention of many researchers. A solution for multilayer networks involves taking into account the information of all layers to make predictions for a target layer. Among the link prediction techniques based on monoplex networks, local random walk is very popular. This paper presents an extended version of this technique for multilayer social networks considering reliable routes and weighted links. Our proposed algorithm as Weighted Reliable Local Random Walk (WRLRW) simultaneously uses interlayer and intralayer information to predict links in a target layer of a multilayer network. WRLRW adjusts link weights based on multimodal and topological features and forms reliable routes between users by multiplying link weights. We demonstrated the effectiveness of WRLRW to address the link prediction problem on real-world multilayer networks through numerical simulations. WRLRW has better performance compared to link prediction techniques based on monoplex networks as well as state-of-the-art methods based on multilayer networks. According to the results of the experiments, WRLRW obtains 3.2% and 2.5% better average f-measure compared to SEM-Path (Structural, Ego-Paths and Meta-Paths features) and MLRW (Multiplex Local Random Walk), respectively.

Link prediction using extended neighborhood based local random walk in multilayer social networks

One of these challenges in the analysis of social networks is the problem of link prediction. The purpose of this problem is to find links that have not yet been observed, but may exist in the future. There are many solutions for link prediction on monoplex networks. However, many real social networks model communication in multiple layers, which are known as multilayer social networks. A solution for multilayer networks involves taking into account the information of all layers to make predictions for a target layer. Among the existing solutions, local random walk has been confirmed as an efficient technique for link prediction in monoplex networks, but this technique is inefficient for link prediction in multilayer networks due to computational complexity. In order to address this issue, in this paper we propose Extended Neighborhood based Local Random Walk (ENLRW) for link prediction in multilayer networks. ENLRW is an extended version of the classical local random walk technique in which the nearest neighbors are considered based on the extended neighborhood concept. ENLRW calculates the similarity between vertices by integrating several different metrics through reliable paths that include intra-layer and inter-layer information. Besides, ENLRW considers vertex influence as a similarity metric to provide an effective reliable biased random walk. The results of the simulations show that the use of different inter-layer and intra-layer information as well as the local random walk configuration with extended neighborhood provides a trade-off between precision and complexity. Specifically, ENLRW improves the average precision by 3.1% compared to the best available state-of-the-art method.

Community-Aware Evolution Similarity for Link Prediction in Dynamic Social Networks

The link prediction problem is a time-evolving model in network science that has simultaneously abetted myriad applications and experienced extensive methodological improvement. Inferring the possibility of emerging links in dynamic social networks, also known as the dynamic link prediction task, is complex and challenging. In contrast to the link prediction in cross-sectional networks, dynamic link prediction methods need to cater to the actor-level temporal changes and associated evolutionary information regarding their micro- (i.e., link formation/deletion) and mesoscale (i.e., community formation) network structure. With the advent of abundant community detection algorithms, the research community has examined community-aware link prediction strategies in static networks. However, the same task in dynamic networks where, apart from the actors and links among them, their community pattern is also dynamic, is yet to be explored. Evolutionary community-aware information, including the associated link structure and temporal neighborhood changes, can effectively be mined to build dynamic similarity metrics for dynamic link prediction. This study aims to develop and integrate such dynamic features with machine learning algorithms for link prediction tasks in dynamic social networks. It also compares the performances of these features against well-known similarity metrics (i.e., ResourceAllocation) for static networks and a time series-based link prediction strategy in dynamic networks. These proposed features achieved high-performance scores, representing them as prospective candidates for both dynamic link prediction tasks and modeling the network growth.

Inductive Link Prediction via Interactive Learning Across Relations in Multiplex Networks

Network embedding is an important class of link prediction methods, which can use the distance between learned low-dimensional node representations to characterize the similarity between nodes. Traditional network embedding methods focus on single-layer networks, while in reality, a large part of complex networks are not isolated, but interdependent and interrelated, forming multiplex complex networks. Also, how to effectively exploit layer correlations in multiplex networks to learn more robust and valuable representations, to improve link prediction performance, has been a hot research topic in the field of complex network analysis. However, previous studies mainly focus on inferring intralinks in each layer of complex networks or anchor links among layers. Another issue that has not been discussed is how to predict potential links or reconstruct the network in unobserved relations based on existing multiplex networks. To this issue, we define a novel inductive link prediction problem in multiplex networks, in which most existing multichannel network embedding methods fail to solve. This is either because they only emphasize the specific structure information of an individual layer or only capture the common information for all layers. To effectively address this problem, we propose a novel embedding method termed interactive learning across relations (ILAR), to capture and fully exploit the multiple relations and complex layer correlations in multiplex networks. We leverage two convolutional modules and ILAR to capture the sufficient complementary and correlations in multiplex networks. Moreover, during interactive learning, a disparity constraint is introduced, which enforces the features encoded from two convolutional modules to be different and prevents information redundancy. Finally, the extensive experiments in several real-world datasets show that our model can significantly outperform the existing state-of-the-art network embedding methods on the novel link prediction problem in multiplex networks.

Promoting fairness in link prediction with graph enhancement.

Link prediction is a crucial task in network analysis, but it has been shown to be prone to biased predictions, particularly when links are unfairly predicted between nodes from different sensitive groups. In this paper, we study the fair link prediction problem, which aims to ensure that the predicted link probability is independent of the sensitive attributes of the connected nodes. Existing methods typically incorporate debiasing techniques within graph embeddings to mitigate this issue. However, training on large real-world graphs is already challenging, and adding fairness constraints can further complicate the process. To overcome this challenge, we propose FairLink, a method that learns a fairness-enhanced graph to bypass the need for debiasing during the link predictor's training. FairLink maintains link prediction accuracy by ensuring that the enhanced graph follows a training trajectory similar to that of the original input graph. Meanwhile, it enhances fairness by minimizing the absolute difference in link probabilities between node pairs within the same sensitive group and those between node pairs from different sensitive groups. Our extensive experiments on multiple large-scale graphs demonstrate that FairLink not only promotes fairness but also often achieves link prediction accuracy comparable to baseline methods. Most importantly, the enhanced graph exhibits strong generalizability across different GNN architectures. FairLink is highly scalable, making it suitable for deployment in real-world large-scale graphs, where maintaining both fairness and accuracy is critical.

INDIVIDUAL TREE SEGMENTATION FROM BLS DATA BASED ON GRAPH AUTOENCODER

Abstract. In the last two decades, Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been widely employed in forestry applications. Individual tree segmentation is essential to forest management because it is a prerequisite to tree reconstruction and biomass estimation. This paper introduces a general framework to extract individual trees from the LiDAR point cloud based on a graph link prediction problem. First, an undirected graph is generated from the point cloud based on K-nearest neighbors (KNN). Then, this graph is used to train a convolutional autoencoder that extracts the node embeddings to reconstruct the graph. Finally, the individual trees are defined by the separate sets of connected nodes of the reconstructed graph. A key advantage of the proposed method is that no further knowledge about tree or forest structure is required. Seven sample plots from a plantation forest with poplar and dawn redwood species have been employed in the experiments. Though the precision of the experimental results is up to 95 % for poplar species and 92 % for dawn redwood trees, the method still requires more investigations on natural forest types with mixed tree species.

A Comprehensive Review of Similarity Based Link Prediction Methods for Complex Networks including Computational Biology

Information retrieval is one of the most challenging tasks for the mankind and to retrieve information interaction is required, which ultimately leads to the formation of networks. Universe is packed with different type of networks. Networks with complex topological properties are called complex network. Such types of networks are major tools for learning the connection between the organizations and finding the purpose of complex systems. The link prediction problems in complex networks facilitate predictions about the future organization of the network. Network is represented as a graph. The data in the network is signified by nodes, and the relations are represented by links. The future of non-connected links amid node pairs is predicted. This paper reviews the methods used to predict links for complex networks using similarity-based heuristics. Previous reviews, despite having a clear outline of the link prediction study, only described the prediction approaches. Research gaps between the similarity-based link prediction techniques, however, were not explicitly stated. With the help of chronological findings and a research gaps approach, this review seeks to give a continuing review and introduce the link prediction.

Link prediction in bipartite networks via effective integration of explicit and implicit relations

Link prediction in bipartite networks aims to identify or predict possible links between nodes of different types based on known network information. However, most existing studies predominantly focus on monopartite networks, neglecting the intrinsic properties unique to bipartite networks, such as the intricate high-order relationships between nodes. Both explicit relations (representing low-order information) and implicit relations (representing high-order information) play essential roles in predicting the evolution of bipartite networks, and they are indispensable and mutually reinforce each other. To fully leverage their potential in addressing the link prediction problem, we propose a novel framework from the perspective of network representation. This framework not only effectively integrates explicit relations and implicit relations, but also preserves the local and global structure of bipartite networks. Specifically, the probability of a link between two nodes of different types is determined by the linear sum of the contribution values of the mutually connected nodes in their respective common neighbors. Implicit relations are then used to preserve the local structure during the network representation. Furthermore, we implement optimization using a relaxed majorization-minimization algorithm, offering the advantage of uncovering high-quality local minima. Our proposed framework has undergone extensive testing on eight real-world datasets, and the results unequivocally demonstrate its significant superiority over state-of-the-art methods.

Resisting the Edge-Type Disturbance for Link Prediction in Heterogeneous Networks

The rapid development of heterogeneous networks has proposed new challenges to the long-standing link prediction problem. Existing models trained on the verified edge samples from different types usually learn type-specific knowledge, and their type-specific predictions may be contradictory for unverified edge samples with uncertain types. This challenge is termed edge-type disturbance in link prediction in heterogeneous networks. To address this challenge, we develop a disturbance-resilient prediction method ( DRPM ) comprising a structural characterizer, a type differentiator, and a resilient predictor. The structural characterizer is responsible for learning edge representations for link prediction. Concurrently, the type differentiator distinguishes type-specific edge representations to generate diverse type experts while maximizing their link prediction performances on specific types. Furthermore, the resilient predictor evaluates the reliability weights of different type experts to develop a resilient prediction mechanism to aggregate discriminable predictions. Extensive experiments conducted on various real-world datasets demonstrate the importance of the explainable introduction of the edge-type disturbance and the superiority of DRPM over state-of-the-art methods.

Improved artificial bee colony algorithm based on community detection for link prediction problem

Improved artificial bee colony algorithm based on community detection for link prediction problem

Forecasting the Missing Links in Heterogeneous Social Networks

Social network analysis has gained attention from several researchers in the past time because of its wide application in capturing social interactions. One of the aims of social network analysis is to recover missing links between the users which may exist in the future but have not yet appeared due to incomplete data. The prediction of hidden or missing links in criminal networks is also a significant problem. The collection of criminal data from these networks appears to be incomplete and inconsistent which is reflected in the structure in the form of missing nodes and links. Many machine learning algorithms are applied for this detection using supervised techniques. But, supervised machine learning algorithms require large datasets for training the link prediction model for achieving optimum results. In this research, we have used a Facebook dataset to solve the problem of link prediction in a network. The two machine learning classifiers applied are LogisticRegression and K-Nearest Neighbour where KNN has higher accuracy than LR. In this article, we have proposed an algorithm Graph Sample Aggregator with Low Reciprocity, (GraphSALR), for the generation of node embeddings in larger graphs which use node feature information.