Link prediction based on a semi-local similarity index

Missing link prediction provides significant instruction for both analysis of network structure and mining of unknown links in incomplete networks. Recently, many algorithms have been proposed based on various node-similarity measures. Among these measures, the common neighbour index, the resource allocation index, and the local path index, stemming from different source, have been proved to have relatively high accuracy and low computational effort. In this paper, we propose a similarity index by combining the resource allocation index and the local path index. Simulation results on six unweighted networks show that the accuracy of the proposed index is higher than that of the local path one. Based on the same idea of the present index, we develop its corresponding weighted version and test it on several weighted networks. It is found that, except for the USAir network, the weighted variant also performs better than both the weighted resource allocation index and the weighted local path index. Due to the improved accuracy and the still low computational complexity, the indices may be useful for link prediction.