Creating Dynamic Networks from a List of Nodes and Directed Edges — dynamic_network

This function was implemented in an earlier version of the development of this package. It has been replaced by networkflow::build_dynamic_networks(). This function creates one or several tidygraph networks from a table of nodes and its directed edges. For instance, for bibliometric networks, you can give a list of articles and the list of the references these articles cite. You can use it to build a single network or multiple networks over different time windows.

Usage

dynamic_network_cooccurrence(
  nodes = NULL,
  directed_edges = NULL,
  source_column = NULL,
  target_column = NULL,
  time_variable = NULL,
  time_window = NULL,
  cooccurrence_method = c("coupling_angle", "coupling_strength", "coupling_similarity"),
  overlapping_window = FALSE,
  edges_threshold = 1,
  compute_size = FALSE,
  keep_singleton = FALSE,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

nodes

The table with all the nodes and their metadata. For instance, if your nodes are articles, this table is likely to contain the year of publication, the name of the authors, the title of the article, etc... The table must have one row per node.

directed_edges

The table with of all the elements to which your nodes are connected. If your nodes are articles, the directed_edges table can contain the list of the references cited by these articles, the authors that have written these articles, or the affiliations of the authors of these articles.

source_column

The column with the unique identifier of each node. For instance, for a bibliographic coupling network, the id of your citing documents.

target_column

The column with the unique identifier of each element connected to the node (for instance, the identifier of the reference cited by your node if the node is an article).

time_variable

The column with the temporal variable you want to use to build your windows for the succession of networks. By default, time_variable is NULL and the function will only build one network without taking into account any temporal variable.

time_window

The length of your network relatively of the unity of the time_variable column. If you use a variable in years as time_variable and you set time_window at 5, the function will build network on five year windows. By default, time_window is NULL and the function will only build one network.

cooccurrence_method

Choose a cooccurrence method to build your indirect edges table. The function propose three methods that depends on the biblionetwork package and three methods that are implemented in it:

the coupling angle measure (see biblionetwork::biblio_coupling() for documentation);
the coupling strength measure (biblionetwork::coupling_strength());
the coupling similarity measure (biblionetwork:: coupling_similarity()).

overlapping_window

Set to FALSE by default. If set to TRUE, and if time_variable and time_window not NULL, the function will create a succession of networks for moving time windows. The windows are moving one unit per one unit of the time_variable. For instance, for years, if time_window set to 5, it creates networks for successive time windows like 1970-1974, 1971-1975, 1972-1976, etc.

edges_threshold

Threshold value for building your edges. With a higher threshold, only the stronger links will be kept. See the biblionetwork package documentation and the cooccurrence_method parameter.

compute_size

Set to FALSE by default. If TRUE, the function uses the directed_edges data to calculate how many directed edges a node receives (as a target). If directed_edges is a table of direct citations, the functions calculates the number of time a node is cited by the other nodes. You need to have the target_column in the nodes table to make the link with the targetted nodes in the directed_edges table.

keep_singleton

Set to FALSE by default. If TRUE, the function removes the nodes that have no undirected edges, i.e. no cooccurrence with any other nodes. In graphical terms, these nodes are alone in the network, with no link with other nodes.

verbose

Set to FALSE if you don't want the function to display different sort of information.

Value

If time_window is NULL, the function computes only one network and return a tidygraph object built with tbl_graph(). If time_variable and time_window are not NULL, the function returns a list of tidygraph networks, for each time window.

Examples

nodes <- Nodes_stagflation |>
dplyr::rename(ID_Art = ItemID_Ref) |>
dplyr::filter(Type == "Stagflation")

references <- Ref_stagflation |>
dplyr::rename(ID_Art = Citing_ItemID_Ref)

temporal_networks <- dynamic_network_cooccurrence(nodes = nodes,
directed_edges = references,
source_column = "ID_Art",
target_column = "ItemID_Ref",
time_variable = "Year",
cooccurrence_method = "coupling_similarity",
time_window = NULL,
edges_threshold = 1,
compute_size = FALSE,
keep_singleton = FALSE,
overlapping_window = TRUE)
#> Warning: `dynamic_network_cooccurrence()` was deprecated in networkflow 0.1.0.
#> ℹ Please use `build_dynamic_networks()` instead.
#> Creation of the network for the 1975-2013 window.
#> We remove the nodes that are alone with no edge. 
#>