Network Alignment

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tang, Rui, Yong, Ziyun, Jiang, Shuyu, Chen, Xingshu, Liu, Yaofang, Zhang, Yi-Cheng, Sun, Gui-Quan, Wang, Wei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Tang, Rui
Yong, Ziyun
Jiang, Shuyu
Chen, Xingshu
Liu, Yaofang
Zhang, Yi-Cheng
Sun, Gui-Quan
Wang, Wei
author_facet Tang, Rui
Yong, Ziyun
Jiang, Shuyu
Chen, Xingshu
Liu, Yaofang
Zhang, Yi-Cheng
Sun, Gui-Quan
Wang, Wei
contents Complex networks are frequently employed to model physical or virtual complex systems. When certain entities exist across multiple systems simultaneously, unveiling their corresponding relationships across the networks becomes crucial. This problem, known as network alignment, holds significant importance. It enhances our understanding of complex system structures and behaviours, facilitates the validation and extension of theoretical physics research about studying complex systems, and fosters diverse practical applications across various fields. However, due to variations in the structure, characteristics, and properties of complex networks across different fields, the study of network alignment is often isolated within each domain, with even the terminologies and concepts lacking uniformity. This review comprehensively summarizes the latest advancements in network alignment research, focusing on analyzing network alignment characteristics and progress in various domains such as social network analysis, bioinformatics, computational linguistics and privacy protection. It provides a detailed analysis of various methods' implementation principles, processes, and performance differences, including structure consistency-based methods, network embedding-based methods, and graph neural network-based (GNN-based) methods. Additionally, the methods for network alignment under different conditions, such as in attributed networks, heterogeneous networks, directed networks, and dynamic networks, are presented. Furthermore, the challenges and the open issues for future studies are also discussed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_11367
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Network Alignment
Tang, Rui
Yong, Ziyun
Jiang, Shuyu
Chen, Xingshu
Liu, Yaofang
Zhang, Yi-Cheng
Sun, Gui-Quan
Wang, Wei
Physics and Society
Computation and Language
Complex networks are frequently employed to model physical or virtual complex systems. When certain entities exist across multiple systems simultaneously, unveiling their corresponding relationships across the networks becomes crucial. This problem, known as network alignment, holds significant importance. It enhances our understanding of complex system structures and behaviours, facilitates the validation and extension of theoretical physics research about studying complex systems, and fosters diverse practical applications across various fields. However, due to variations in the structure, characteristics, and properties of complex networks across different fields, the study of network alignment is often isolated within each domain, with even the terminologies and concepts lacking uniformity. This review comprehensively summarizes the latest advancements in network alignment research, focusing on analyzing network alignment characteristics and progress in various domains such as social network analysis, bioinformatics, computational linguistics and privacy protection. It provides a detailed analysis of various methods' implementation principles, processes, and performance differences, including structure consistency-based methods, network embedding-based methods, and graph neural network-based (GNN-based) methods. Additionally, the methods for network alignment under different conditions, such as in attributed networks, heterogeneous networks, directed networks, and dynamic networks, are presented. Furthermore, the challenges and the open issues for future studies are also discussed.
title Network Alignment
topic Physics and Society
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11367