Price's model

Price's model (named after the physicist Derek J. de Solla Price) is a mathematical model for the growth of
citation networks.[1][2] It was the first model which generalized the Simon model[3] to be used for
networks, especially for growing networks. Price's model belongs to the broader class of network growing
models (together with the Barabási–Albert model) whose primary target is to explain the origination of
networks with strongly skewed degree distributions. The model picked up the ideas of the Simon model
reflecting the concept of rich get richer, also known as the Matthew effect. Price took the example of a
network of citations between scientific papers and expressed its properties. His idea was that the way an old
vertex (existing paper) gets new edges (new citations) should be proportional to the number of existing
edges (existing citations) the vertex already has. This was referred to as cumulative advantage, now also
known as preferential attachment. Price's work is also significant in providing the first known example of a
scale-free network (although this term was introduced later). His ideas were used to describe many real-
world networks such as the Web.

The model

Basics

Considering a directed graph with n nodes. Let denote the fraction of nodes with degree k so that
. Each new node has a given out-degree (namely those papers it cites) and it is fixed in the long

run. This does not mean that the out-degrees can not vary across nodes, simply we assume that the mean
out-degree m is fixed over time. It is clear, that , consequently m is not restricted to integers.

The most trivial form of preferential attachment means that a new node connects to an existing node
proportionally to its in-degrees. In other words, a new paper cites an existing paper in proportional to its in-
degrees. The caveat of such idea is that no new paper is cited when it is joined to the network so it is going
to have zero probability of being cited in the future (which necessarily is not how it happens). To overcome
this, Price proposed that an attachment should be proportional to some with constant. In general
can be arbitrary, yet Price proposes a , in that way an initial citation is associated with the paper
itself (so the proportionality factor is now k + 1 instead of k). The probability of a new edge connecting to
any node with a degree k is

Evolution of the network

The next question is the net change in the number of nodes with degree k when we add new nodes to the
network. Naturally, this number is decreasing, as some k-degree nodes have new edges, hence becoming
(k + 1)-degree nodes; but on the other hand this number is also increasing, as some (k − 1)-degree nodes
might get new edges, becoming k degree nodes. To express this net change formally, let us denote the
fraction of k-degree nodes at a network of n vertices with :
and

To obtain a stationary solution for , first let us express using the well-known master
equation method, as

After some manipulation, the expression above yields to

and

with being the Beta-function. As a consequence, . This is identical to saying that

follows a power-law distribution with exponent . Typically, this places the exponent
between 2 and 3, which is the case for many real world networks. Price tested his model by comparing to
the citation network data and concluded that the resulting m is feasible to produce a sufficiently good
power-law distribution.

Generalization

It is straightforward how to generalize the above results to the case when . Basic calculations show
that

which once more yields to a power law distribution of with the same exponent for
large k and fixed .

Properties

The key difference from the more recent Barabási–Albert model is that the Price model produces a graph
with directed edges while the Barabási–Albert model is the same model but with undirected edges. The
direction is central to the citation network application which motivated Price. This means that the Price
model produces a directed acyclic graph and these networks have distinctive properties.
For example, in a directed acyclic graph both longest paths and shortest paths are well defined. In the Price
model the length of the longest path from the n-th node added to the network to the first node in the
network, scales as[4]

Notes
For further discussion, see,[5][6] and.[7][8] Price was able to derive these results but this was how far he
could get with it, without the provision of computational resources. Fortunately, much work dedicated to
preferential attachment and network growth has been enabled by recent technological progress.

References
1. de Solla Price, D. J. (1965-07-30). "Networks of Scientific Papers". Science. American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 149 (3683): 510–515.
Bibcode:1965Sci...149..510D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965Sci...149..510D).
doi:10.1126/science.149.3683.510 (https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.149.3683.510).
ISSN 0036-8075 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0036-8075). PMID 14325149 (https://pubme
d.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14325149).
2. de Solla Price, Derek J. (1976), "A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative
advantage processes", J. Amer. Soc. Inform. Sci., 27 (5): 292–306,
doi:10.1002/asi.4630270505 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fasi.4630270505)
3. Simon, Herbert A. (1955). "On a class of skew distribution functions". Biometrika. Oxford
University Press (OUP). 42 (3–4): 425–440. doi:10.1093/biomet/42.3-4.425 (https://doi.org/1
0.1093%2Fbiomet%2F42.3-4.425). ISSN 0006-3444 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0006-34
44).
4. Evans, T.S.; Calmon, L.; Vasiliauskaite, V. (2020), "The Longest Path in the Price Model",
Scientific Reports, 10 (1): 10503, arXiv:1903.03667 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.03667),
Bibcode:2020NatSR..1010503E (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020NatSR..1010503E),
doi:10.1038/s41598-020-67421-8 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41598-020-67421-8),
PMC 7324613 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7324613), PMID 32601403
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32601403)
5. Dorogovtsev, S. N.; Mendes, J. F. F.; Samukhin, A. N. (2000-11-20). "Structure of Growing
Networks with Preferential Linking". Physical Review Letters. 85 (21): 4633–4636.
arXiv:cond-mat/0004434 (https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0004434).
Bibcode:2000PhRvL..85.4633D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000PhRvL..85.4633D).
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mat/0011094 (https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0011094). Bibcode:2001PhRvE..63f6123K (http
s://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001PhRvE..63f6123K). doi:10.1103/physreve.63.066123 (htt
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Satorras and J. Rubi (eds.), Proceedings of the XVIII Sitges Conference on Statistical
Mechanics, Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer, Berlin (2003).

Sources
Newman, M. E. J. (2003). "The Structure and Function of Complex Networks". SIAM
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