Shared Nodes of Overlapping Communities in Complex Networks

Overlapping communities are key characteristics of the structure and function analysis of complex networks. Shared or overlapping nodes within overlapping communities can form either subcommunities or act as intersections between larger communities. Nodes at the intersections that do not form subcommunities can be identified as overlapping nodes or as part of an internal structure of nested communities. To identify overlapping nodes, we apply a threshold rule based on the number of nodes in the nested structure. As the threshold value increases, the number of selected overlapping nodes decreases. This approach allows us to analyse the roles of nodes considered overlapping according to selection criteria, for example to reduce the effect of noise. We illustrate our method by using three small and two larger real-world network structures. In larger networks, minor disturbances can produce a multitude of slightly different solutions, but the core communities remain robust, allowing other variations to be treated as noise. While this study employs our own method for community detection, other approaches can also be applied. Exploring the properties of shared nodes in overlapping communities of complex networks is a novel area of research with diverse applications in social network analysis, cybersecurity, and other fields in network science.

💡 Research Summary

The paper addresses the problem of identifying truly overlapping nodes in complex networks, distinguishing them from noise‑induced or internal sub‑community structures. While many overlapping‑community detection algorithms exist, they often output large sets of shared nodes without a systematic post‑processing step to filter out spurious overlaps. The authors propose a simple yet effective threshold‑based filtering framework that operates on the ratio of outer‑layer to inner‑layer node counts within nested community structures.

The underlying community detection engine is the influence‑spreading model introduced in the authors’ earlier work (reference