Let's break it down: - **Asking for an open-source implementation** is off-topic. Asking for an open-source implementation to do X is equivalent to asking for a software package to do X. They're both off-topic here. See http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/a/31/755 for a relevant policy statement: "[asking] for a complete software package [...] is *definitely* out of our mandate as the underlying problem/task is not related to computer science". - **Asking for an algorithm** for some well-defined task certainly is on-topic here. That's our bread and butter. - **Asking for papers that describe an algorithm** for some well-defined task is on-topic. A note of advice: in my opinion, it's probably more useful to ask for an algorithm to do X, rather than asking for a paper that describes an algorithm to do X. If you ask for an algorithm to do X, you might get back a paper reference, or you might get back an algorithm even if there is no paper. If you ask for a paper, you've ruled out an entire class of useful answers. But either one is in scope and on-topic. - **Asking for papers that describe how to implement an algorithm for this task** feels borderline to me. It could be OK -- or it might be problematic. The risk is that there may not be any paper that describes how to do an entire implementation, including all relevant implementation issues. And many implementation considerations tend to be a matter for Stack Overflow; we focus on the science (e.g., algorithms, concepts, fundamental techniques, rather than programming language specific concerns). My advice would be to start by asking for an algorithm for the task; then, if you run into any *specific* issue with implementing the algorithm, ask another question about that specific issue, either on Stack Overflow or here, depending on whether the issue has to do with fundamental computer science concepts or has more to do with programming/coding. Asking for implementation advice before you even have an approach or algorithm seems to me like it's getting ahead of things. But this is just friendly advice. - **Asking for "X or Y" where X is off-topic and Y is on-topic** is not good practice and risks having your question closed as off-topic. Don't ask for something you know is off-topic here; remove all the off-topic requests from your question, and focus only on the part that is on-topic. In summary, to make your question on-topic, you'll need to remove the part of your question that asks for an open-source implementation. If you want to rehabilitate the question to be on-topic here, for your sake, I'd recommend that you focus on asking for an algorithm for power graph analysis/visualization, rather than on asking for a document or paper -- but that is your choice. ---- Note: In this answer I'm focusing only on what's on-topic. Even if the question is edited to be on-topic, it will still need to meet our other requirements, including being focused enough that it can be answered in a few paragraphs; containing enough information that the task/question is well-defined; and describing what research you've done and what approaches you've considered. As it stands, the question is open-ended and what you mean by "power graph analysis/visualization" is not explained, so you would do better to explain what you mean by that: what tasks do you want to be able to do? what visualizations do you want to produce? what requirements do you have for any such system?