A clique-based discrete bat algorithm for influence maximization in identifying top-k influential nodes of social networks

The problem of identifying the top-k influential node is still an open and deeply felt issue. The development of a stable and efficient algorithm to deal with such identification is still a challenging research hot spot. Although conventional centrality-based and greedy-based methods show high performance, they are not very efficient when dealing with large-scale social networks. Recently, algorithms based on swarm intelligence are applied to solve the problems mentioned above, and the existing researches show that such algorithms can obtain the optimal global solution. In particular, the discrete bat algorithm (DBA) has been proved to have excellent performance, but the evolution mechanism based on a random selection strategy leads to the optimal solution's instability. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a clique-DBA algorithm. The proposed algorithm is based on the clique partition of a network and enhances the initial DBA algorithm's stability. The experimental results show that the proposed clique-DBA algorithm converges to a determined local influence estimation (LIE) value in each run, eliminating the phenomenon of large fluctuation of LIE fitness value generated by the original DBA algorithm. Finally, the simulated results achieved under the independent cascade model show that the clique-DBA algorithm has a comparable performance of influence spreading compared with the algorithms proposed in the state of the art.