A novel similarity measure of link prediction in bipartite social networks based on neighborhood structure

Abstract Link prediction is one of the methods of social network analysis. Bipartite networks are a type of complex network that can be used to model many natural events. In this study, a novel similarity measure for link prediction in bipartite networks is presented. Due to the fact that classical social network link prediction methods are less efficient and effective for use in bipartite network, it is necessary to use bipartite network-specific methods to solve this problem. The purpose of this study is to provide a centralized and comprehensive method based on the neighborhood structure that performs better than the existing classical methods. The proposed method consists of a combination of criteria based on the neighborhood structure. Here, the classical criteria for link prediction by modifying the bipartite network are defined. These modified criteria constitute the main component of the proposed similarity measure. In addition to low simplicity and complexity, this method has high efficiency. The simulation results show that the proposed method with a superiority of 0.5% over MetaPath, 1.32% over FriendLink, and 1.8% over Katz in the f-measure criterion shows the best performance.