Conferences and journals for network science?

Question

I'd like to learn about the state of the art in network science and which problems researchers are actively working on. In particular, I'm interested in the applications, but the theory is also interesting.

I've found papers on scholar.google.com, and if I'm not mistaken most of the papers are published in application-specific conferences. For example, if network science is used to understand something related to cancer then the results are published in a medical journal. This is making it hard for me to get a consistent view and it's hard for me to get access to such a broad section of the literature (I'm not at a university so I keep hitting paywalls).

tl;dr: Where can I find conferences and journals that focus on network science?

Answer 1

I agree with Seteropere completely, "Network Science" is a very broad subject. I work with the theory of "dynamic networks" which involves a lot of graph theory, complex networks, and time series analysis, but also in protocol design for Delay Tolerant Networks which is another application you might like.

Take a look at this website, http://www.network-science.org/ it has plenty of links that I rate very highly. Including links to Alain Barrat's work (check out http://www.sociopatterns.org/ it has some wonderful illustrations of dynamic networks). There is also a conference devoted specifically to Temporal and Dynamic Networks http://tdn2013.wix.com/tdn2013#!contributions/cmc

Here are some of the tips I sent to a recent new student in our department, most are free in that there are no paywalls:

1. Look at the references on the most recent papers you are reading, and also look at the conferences and journals that the authors are involved in by visiting their personal websites. This will tell you where people are currently submitting to.
2. There are some websites devoted to finding conferences too, but don't rely on them. Some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_science_conferences http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/
3. Find a conference you like the look of, look at their calls for papers, and past proceedings to see what they are asking for.
4. Mailing lists! Sign up to (but don't spam) well known mailing lists. Again this will be dependent on the area you are interested in. In computer networking the biggest mailing list for calls for papers is probably the IEEE TCCC mailing list, http://committees.comsoc.org/tccc/mailing_list/.
5. Social networks. Sign up to Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/etc. A lot of Phd Students, PostDocs, lecturers, research groups, and conferences are on Twitter. When you find someone or something you like, look for it on social networking sites, look who is following, what they are talking about, and get involved.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I would say you are approaching it in the wrong way. Since network science (as Wikipedia defined it) is multidisciplinary concept, then I really doubt finding a consistent venue (conferences/ journals) for it. This is specially true if you are interested in the application side. If you are interested in the theory behind it, I see Graph Theory is the way to go.

I have worked in different applications of what so called network science including bioinformatics, social networks. I only knew graph theory (I had no clue what genes really are). So this largely depends on the application domain.

So simple steps to go:

1. Pick an area/interesting problem related to your expertise/background.
2. Read its literature.

If you saw a good paper related to your work, then keep an eye on the authors.

Answer 3

To echo both of the other answerers, "Network Science" is really, really broad as a field, which means that conferences, journal venues and the like can often be quite hard to find, as many people are interested in network science as it applies to their field.

One productive way forward is simply to ask people doing network science in your field where they present and publish, or do a bit of Google Scholar stalking.

For example, building off a colleague of mine's recent work:

• Both Netsci '18 and the SIAM Network Science conference are likely good general conferences
• But so is the Ecological Society of America for network science applications of biological systems, and Epidemics for...well...Epidemics.