PONE-D-20-27457

Local hypergraph clustering using capacity releasing diffusion

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ibrahim,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

From the reports received, one of the reviewers is raising some concerns with the experiments performed and the methodology used to withdraw some of the conclusions. They also pointed out some minor typos to amend. 

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Irene Sendiña-Nadal

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this manuscript the authors place their research within the context of existing literature and extend the recent technique called CDR (capacity releasing diffusion, a method to find local clusters presented in 2017)

to a new method called hypergraph CRD (HG-CRD).

This new method outperforms the capabilities of the forementioned CDR in the sense that it provides a more robust computation of the conductance associated to the used motifs. The new method

is important for two reasons. On the one hand, this new framework

makes use of an hypergraph (or multigraph) defined on the same nodes that the original graph in which is wanted to perform

the clustering, jointly with a set of hyperedges (sets of nodes connected by a pattern or motif). On the other hand, HG-CRD does not need the construction of the motif-weighted adjacency matrix (and this is a difference with some methods for local clustering based on Personalized PageRank). The authors also extend some known theoretical results to the new framework. One of the great capabilities of the presented method is the ability to use, in principle, any kind of motif, including directed subgraphs. The algorithm is not subjected to the

Cheeger inequality when there is a proper cluster close to the seed nodes where the algorithm starts.

The results are obtained by using synthetic and real graphs and show that HG-CRD properly finds motif clusters and it may

be a useful tool for community detection in a wide range of applications. (See the attached file)

Reviewer #2: See the attached pdf.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Francisco Pedroche

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: refereePlos.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review.pdf

Local hypergraph clustering using capacity releasing diffusion

PONE-D-20-27457R1

Dear Dr. Ibrahim,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Irene Sendiña-Nadal

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript has been modified according to some suggestions of the referees. Besides correcting some minor typos about language and structrure, some new explanations and experiments have been added. In my view, the manuscript is now more readable and it can be published in the current form.

Reviewer #2: The authors replied to all my concerns sufficiently and they did all the additional necessary experiments. I recommend accepting the paper.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Francisco Pedroche

Reviewer #2: No