Graph Lifelong Learning: A Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Graph learning is a popular approach for performing machine learning on graph-structured data. It has revolutionized the machine learning ability to model graph data to address downstream tasks. Its application is wide due to the availability of graph data ranging from all types of networks to information systems. Most graph learning methods assume that the graph is static and its complete structure is known during training. This limits their applicability since they cannot be applied to problems where the underlying graph grows over time and/or new tasks emerge incrementally. Such applications require a lifelong learning approach that can learn the graph continuously and accommodate new information whilst retaining previously learned knowledge. Lifelong learning methods that enable continuous learning in regular domains like images and text cannot be directly applied to continuously evolving graph data, due to its irregular structure. As a result, graph lifelong learning is gaining attention from the research community. This survey paper provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in graph lifelong learning, including the categorization of existing methods, and the discussions of potential applications and open research problems.
Key facts. Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 87 of its 137 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Feb 2022.
Builds on
87 of 137 references.
References · 87
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38 more
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50 most cited of 87 All 87 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 5; 2023: 7; 2024: 12; 2025: 6.
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- 2023Structure-free Graph Condensation: From Large-scale Graphs to Condensed Graph-free Datacited by 71
- 2022Self-Supervised Continual Graph Learning in Adaptive Riemannian Spacescited by 32
- 2024Graph Transformers: A Surveycited by 32
- 2024Graph Condensation: A Surveycited by 23
- 2024Continual Learning on Graphs: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunitiescited by 20
- 2023Continual Graph Learning: A Surveycited by 17
- 2024Graph Learning under Distribution Shifts: A Comprehensive Survey on Domain Adaptation, Out-of-distribution, and Continual Learningcited by 17
- 2024Replay-and-Forget-Free Graph Class-Incremental Learning: A Task Profiling and Prompting Approachcited by 12
- 2025Graph2text or Graph2token: A Perspective of Large Language Models for Graph Learningcited by 12
- 2023Universal Graph Continual Learningcited by 9
- 2024Continual Learning for Smart City: A Surveycited by 9
- 2022BeGin: Extensive Benchmark Scenarios and An Easy-to-use Framework for Graph Continual Learningcited by 8
18 more
- 2022SS-GNN: A Simple-Structured Graph Neural Network for Affinity Predictioncited by 7
- 2023On the Limitation and Experience Replay for GNNs in Continual Learningcited by 7
- 2023Open-World Lifelong Graph Learningcited by 5
- 2024Graph Memory Learning: Imitating Lifelong Remembering and Forgetting of Brain Networkscited by 4
- 2022Lifelong Learning for Neural powered Mixed Integer Programmingcited by 2
- 2024Benchmarking Sensitivity of Continual Graph Learning for Skeleton-Based Action Recognitioncited by 2
- 2025Online Continual Graph Learningcited by 2
- 2023Balanced Graph Structure Information for Brain Disease Detectioncited by 1
- 2022tegdet: An extensible Python Library for Anomaly Detection using Time-Evolving Graphscited by 0
- 2023Learning Continually on a Sequence of Graphs -- The Dynamical System Waycited by 0
- 2024LingML: Linguistic-Informed Machine Learning for Enhanced Fake News Detectioncited by 0
- 2024Deep-Graph-Sprints: Accelerated Representation Learning in Continuous-Time Dynamic Graphscited by 0
- 2024E-CGL: An Efficient Continual Graph Learnercited by 0
- 2024Slicing Input Features to Accelerate Deep Learning: A Case Study with Graph Neural Networkscited by 0
- 2025Advances in Continual Graph Learning for Anti-Money Laundering Systems: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 0
- 2025MEGA: Second-Order Gradient Alignment for Catastrophic Forgetting Mitigation in GFSCILcited by 0
- 2025Rehearsal with Auxiliary-Informed Sampling for Audio Deepfake Detectioncited by 0
- 2025The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Randomized Representations in Online Continual Graph Learningcited by 0
- 2025The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Randomized Representations in Online Continual Graph Learning8 Oct 2025
- 2025Online Continual Graph Learning5 Aug 2025
- 2025Rehearsal with Auxiliary-Informed Sampling for Audio Deepfake Detection30 May 2025
- 2025MEGA: Second-Order Gradient Alignment for Catastrophic Forgetting Mitigation in GFSCIL18 Apr 2025
- 2025Advances in Continual Graph Learning for Anti-Money Laundering Systems: A Comprehensive Review31 Mar 2025
- 2025Graph2text or Graph2token: A Perspective of Large Language Models for Graph Learning2 Jan 2025
- 2024Replay-and-Forget-Free Graph Class-Incremental Learning: A Task Profiling and Prompting Approach14 Oct 2024
- 2024Slicing Input Features to Accelerate Deep Learning: A Case Study with Graph Neural Networks21 Aug 2024
- 2024E-CGL: An Efficient Continual Graph Learner18 Aug 2024
- 2024Graph Memory Learning: Imitating Lifelong Remembering and Forgetting of Brain Networks27 Jul 2024
- 2024Graph Transformers: A Survey13 Jul 2024
- 2024Deep-Graph-Sprints: Accelerated Representation Learning in Continuous-Time Dynamic Graphs10 Jul 2024
18 more
- 2024LingML: Linguistic-Informed Machine Learning for Enhanced Fake News Detection7 May 2024
- 2024Continual Learning for Smart City: A Survey1 Apr 2024
- 2024Graph Learning under Distribution Shifts: A Comprehensive Survey on Domain Adaptation, Out-of-distribution, and Continual Learning26 Feb 2024
- 2024Continual Learning on Graphs: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities18 Feb 2024
- 2024Benchmarking Sensitivity of Continual Graph Learning for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition31 Jan 2024
- 2024Graph Condensation: A Survey22 Jan 2024
- 2023Balanced Graph Structure Information for Brain Disease Detection30 Dec 2023
- 2023Open-World Lifelong Graph Learning19 Oct 2023
- 2023Universal Graph Continual Learning27 Aug 2023
- 2023Structure-free Graph Condensation: From Large-scale Graphs to Condensed Graph-free Data5 Jun 2023
- 2023Learning Continually on a Sequence of Graphs -- The Dynamical System Way19 May 2023
- 2023On the Limitation and Experience Replay for GNNs in Continual Learning7 Feb 2023
- 2023Continual Graph Learning: A Survey28 Jan 2023
- 2022Self-Supervised Continual Graph Learning in Adaptive Riemannian Spaces30 Nov 2022
- 2022BeGin: Extensive Benchmark Scenarios and An Easy-to-use Framework for Graph Continual Learning26 Nov 2022
- 2022tegdet: An extensible Python Library for Anomaly Detection using Time-Evolving Graphs17 Oct 2022
- 2022Lifelong Learning for Neural powered Mixed Integer Programming24 Aug 2022
- 2022SS-GNN: A Simple-Structured Graph Neural Network for Affinity Prediction25 May 2022
- 2023Structure-free Graph Condensation: From Large-scale Graphs to Condensed Graph-free Datacited by 71
- 2022Self-Supervised Continual Graph Learning in Adaptive Riemannian Spacescited by 32
- 2024Graph Transformers: A Surveycited by 32
- 2024Graph Condensation: A Surveycited by 23
- 2024Continual Learning on Graphs: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunitiescited by 20
- 2023Continual Graph Learning: A Surveycited by 17
- 2024Graph Learning under Distribution Shifts: A Comprehensive Survey on Domain Adaptation, Out-of-distribution, and Continual Learningcited by 17
- 2024Replay-and-Forget-Free Graph Class-Incremental Learning: A Task Profiling and Prompting Approachcited by 12
- 2025Graph2text or Graph2token: A Perspective of Large Language Models for Graph Learningcited by 12
- 2023Universal Graph Continual Learningcited by 9
- 2024Continual Learning for Smart City: A Surveycited by 9
- 2022BeGin: Extensive Benchmark Scenarios and An Easy-to-use Framework for Graph Continual Learningcited by 8
12 most cited of 30 All 30 (JSON)
- 2025The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Randomized Representations in Online Continual Graph Learning8 Oct 2025
- 2025Online Continual Graph Learning5 Aug 2025
- 2025Rehearsal with Auxiliary-Informed Sampling for Audio Deepfake Detection30 May 2025
- 2025MEGA: Second-Order Gradient Alignment for Catastrophic Forgetting Mitigation in GFSCIL18 Apr 2025
- 2025Advances in Continual Graph Learning for Anti-Money Laundering Systems: A Comprehensive Review31 Mar 2025
- 2025Graph2text or Graph2token: A Perspective of Large Language Models for Graph Learning2 Jan 2025
- 2024Replay-and-Forget-Free Graph Class-Incremental Learning: A Task Profiling and Prompting Approach14 Oct 2024
- 2024Slicing Input Features to Accelerate Deep Learning: A Case Study with Graph Neural Networks21 Aug 2024
- 2024E-CGL: An Efficient Continual Graph Learner18 Aug 2024
- 2024Graph Memory Learning: Imitating Lifelong Remembering and Forgetting of Brain Networks27 Jul 2024
- 2024Graph Transformers: A Survey13 Jul 2024
- 2024Deep-Graph-Sprints: Accelerated Representation Learning in Continuous-Time Dynamic Graphs10 Jul 2024
12 newest of 30 All 30 (JSON)