Summary: The ModuLand method-family

Background: Network communities help the functional organization and evolution of complex networks. However, the development of a method, which is both fast and accurate, provides modular overlaps and partitions of a heterogeneous network, has proven to be rather difficult.

Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we introduce the novel concept of ModuLand, an integrative method family determining overlapping network modules as hills of an influence function-based, centrality-type community landscape, and including several widely used modularization methods as special cases. As various adaptations of the method family, we developed several algorithms, which provide an efficient analysis of weighted and directed networks, and (1) determine pervasively overlapping modules with high resolution; (2) uncover a detailed hierarchical network structure allowing an efficient, zoom-in analysis of large networks; (3) allow the determination of key network nodes and (4) help to predict network dynamics.

Conclusions/Significance: The concept opens a wide range of possibilities to develop new approaches and applications including network routing, classification, comparison and prediction.

Downloadable materials:

• Manuscript describing the ModuLand method:
  Kovács, I.A., Palotai, R., Szalay, M.S. and Csermely, P. (2010) Community landscapes: a novel, integrative approach for the determination of overlapping network modules. (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0912.0161) Download it!
• Electronic Supplementary Material (ESM1) of the manuscript containing a detailed description of the ModuLand method including the pseudo-codes of all algorithms used, 14 Figures, 5 Tables (with 18 module definitions, 129 different modularization methods, 13 module comparision methods), a Supplementary Discusssion and 396 references. Download it!
• A detailed User Guide to use the ModuLand program package. Download it!
• The ModuLand algorithm package described in the User Guide also including all network data used in the manuscript. (Please note that a Linux-based operating system is required for running the ModuLand programs included. Alternatively, a prebuilt VirtualBox Image is available for running the ModuLand programs on your computer.) Register and download!

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Other publications:

• You can find our previous network community-related publications here.
• You can find the 2006 starting ideas of the ModuLand method as a patent application here.