Improving heuristics for network modularity maximization using an exact algorithm

Heuristics are widely applied to modularity maximization models for the identification of communities in complex networks. We present an approach to be applied as a post-processing to heuristic methods in order to improve their performances. Starting from a given partition, we test with an exact algorithm for bipartitioning if it is worthwhile to split some communities or to merge two of them. A combination of merge and split actions is also performed. Computational experiments show that the proposed approach is effective in improving heuristic results.