eprintid: 2831
rev_number: 9
eprint_status: archive
userid: 69
dir: disk0/00/00/28/31
datestamp: 2015-11-05 14:29:28
lastmod: 2015-11-16 15:27:33
status_changed: 2015-11-05 14:29:28
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Saracco, Fabio
creators_name: Di Clemente, Riccardo
creators_name: Gabrielli, Andrea
creators_name: Squartini, Tiziano
creators_id: fabio.saracco@imtlucca.it
creators_id: riccardo.diclemente@alumni.imtlucca.it
creators_id: 
creators_id: tiziano.squartini@imtlucca.it
title: Randomizing bipartite networks: the case of the World Trade Web
ispublished: pub
subjects: HB
subjects: QA
divisions: EIC
full_text_status: public
abstract: Within the last fifteen years, network theory has been successfully applied both to natural sciences and to socioeconomic disciplines. In particular, bipartite networks have been recognized to provide a particularly insightful representation of many systems, ranging from mutualistic networks in ecology to trade networks in economy, whence the need of a pattern detection-oriented analysis in order to identify statistically-significant structural properties. Such an analysis rests upon the definition of suitable null models, i.e. upon the choice of the portion of network structure to be preserved while randomizing everything else. However, quite surprisingly, little work has been done so far to define null models for real bipartite networks. The aim of the present work is to fill this gap, extending a recently-proposed method to randomize monopartite networks to bipartite networks. While the proposed formalism is perfectly general, we apply our method to the binary, undirected, bipartite representation of the World Trade Web, comparing the observed values of a number of structural quantities of interest with the expected ones, calculated via our randomization procedure. Interestingly, the behavior of the World Trade Web in this new representation is strongly different from the monopartite analogue, showing highly non-trivial patterns of self-organization.
date: 2015
date_type: published
publication: Scientific Reports
volume: 5
publisher: Nature Publishing Group
pagerange: 10595
id_number: 10.1038/srep10595
refereed: TRUE
issn: 2045-2322
official_url: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep10595
citation:   Saracco, Fabio and Di Clemente, Riccardo and Gabrielli, Andrea and Squartini, Tiziano  Randomizing bipartite networks: the case of the World Trade Web.  Scientific Reports, 5.  p. 10595.  ISSN 2045-2322      (2015)  
document_url: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2831/1/srep10595%20%281%29.pdf