Many complex systems-from the Internet to social, biological, and communication networks-are thought to exhibit scale-free structure. However, prevailing explanations require that networks grow over time, an assumption that fails in some real-world settings. Here, we explain how scale-free structure can emerge without growth through network self-organization. Beginning with an arbitrary network, we allow connections to detach from random nodes and then reconnect under a mixture of preferential and random attachment. While the numbers of nodes and edges remain fixed, the degree distribution evolves toward a power-law with an exponent that depends only on the proportion of preferential (rather than random) attachment. Applying our model to several real networks, we infer directly from data and predict the relationship between network size and degree heterogeneity. Together, these results establish how scale-free structure can arise in networks of constant size and density, with broad implications for the structure and function of complex systems.
