Taxonomy of link prediction for social network analysis: A review

Abstract

Link prediction is a technique to forecast future new or missing relationships between entities based on the current network information. Graph theory and network science are theoretical concepts that have influenced the link prediction research. Although previous reviews clearly outlined the link prediction research, it was focused on describing prediction approaches only. However, analysis of related studies identified other components that influence link prediction. This review aims to present a continued review and introduce the taxonomy of link prediction using three main components: the prediction approaches, prediction features, and prediction measurements. Each component has been detailed using its own taxonomy available at the present review. Furthermore, this review compares the prediction approaches and prediction features also benchmark algorithms and measurement methods of previous link prediction studies. In conclusion, the previous studies mostly focused on structural features and similarity-based approaches, while measuring the proposed methods using the Area Under the Curve (AUC) score. The proposed link prediction taxonomy can guide the researchers to generate new ideas and innovations that contribute to the link prediction research.