TY - JOUR TI - Narrow scope for resolution-limit-free community detection AU - Traag, V. A. AU - Van Dooren, P. AU - Nesterov, Y. T2 - Physical Review E AB - Detecting communities in large networks has drawn much attention over the years. While modularity remains one of the more popular methods of community detection, the so-called resolution limit remains a significant drawback. To overcome this issue, it was recently suggested that instead of comparing the network to a random null model, as is done in modularity, it should be compared to a constant factor. However, it is unclear what is meant exactly by "resolution-limit-free", that is, not suffering from the resolution limit. Furthermore, the question remains what other methods could be classified as resolution-limit-free. In this paper we suggest a rigorous definition and derive some basic properties of resolution-limit-free methods. More importantly, we are able to prove exactly which class of community detection methods are resolution-limit-free. Furthermore, we analyze which methods are not resolution-limit-free, suggesting there is only a limited scope for resolution-limit-free community detection methods. Finally, we provide such a natural formulation, and show it performs superbly. DA - 2011/07// PY - 2011 DO - 10.1103/PhysRevE.84.016114 VL - 84 IS - 1 SP - 016114 SN - 1539-3755 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3083 ER -