Narrow scope for resolution-free community detection

Detecting communities in large networks has drawn much attention over the years. While modularity remains one of the more popular methods of community detection, the so-called resolution limit remains a significant drawback. To overcome this issue, it was recently suggested that instead of comparing the network to a random null model, as is done in modularity, it should be compared to a constant factor. However, it is unclear what is meant exactly by ‘resolution-free’, i.e. not suffering from the resolution limit. Furthermore, the question remains what other methods could be classified as resolution-free. In this paper we suggest a rigorous definition and derive some basic properties of resolution-free methods. More importantly, we are able to prove exactly which class of community detection methods are resolution-free. Furthermore, we analyze which methods are not resolution-free, suggesting there is only a limited scope for resolution-free community detection methods. Finally, we provide such a natural formulation, and show it performs superbly.