Evolution of citation networks with the hypergraph formalism

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed an evolving model via the hypergraph to illustrate the evolution of the citation network. In the evolving model, we consider the mechanism combined with preferential attachment and the aging influence. Simulation results show that the proposed model can characterize the citation distribution of the real system very well. In addition, we give the analytical result of the citation distribution using the master equation. Detailed analysis showed that the time decay factor should be the origin of the same citation distribution between the proposed model and the empirical result. The proposed model might shed some lights in understanding the underlying laws governing the structure of real citation networks.