On the Robustness of Explanations of Deep Neural Network Models: A Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Explainability has been widely stated as a cornerstone of the responsible and trustworthy use of machine learning models. With the ubiquitous use of Deep Neural Network (DNN) models expanding to risk-sensitive and safety-critical domains, many methods have been proposed to explain the decisions of these models. Recent years have also seen concerted efforts that have shown how such explanations can be distorted (attacked) by minor input perturbations. While there have been many surveys that review explainability methods themselves, there has been no effort hitherto to assimilate the different methods and metrics proposed to study the robustness of explanations of DNN models. In this work, we present a comprehensive survey of methods that study, understand, attack, and defend explanations of DNN models. We also present a detailed review of different metrics used to evaluate explanation methods, as well as describe attributional attack and defense methods. We conclude with lessons and take-aways for the community towards ensuring robust explanations of DNN model predictions.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 91 of its 133 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Nov 2022.
Builds on
91 of 133 references.
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50 most cited of 91 All 91 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 3; 2026: 1.
5 papers.
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- 2025Hierarchical Testing with Rabbit Optimization for Industrial Cyber-Physical Systemscited by 4
- 2025Accuracy is Not Enough: Poisoning Interpretability in Federated Learning via Color Skewcited by 0
- 2025Hybrid Attribution Priors for Explainable and Robust Model Trainingcited by 0
- 2026Verifying the Linear Representation Hypothesis: How Interpretable Are Vision SAEs?cited by 0
- 2026Verifying the Linear Representation Hypothesis: How Interpretable Are Vision SAEs?28 Sep 2026
- 2025Hybrid Attribution Priors for Explainable and Robust Model Training9 Dec 2025
- 2025Accuracy is Not Enough: Poisoning Interpretability in Federated Learning via Color Skew17 Nov 2025
- 2025Hierarchical Testing with Rabbit Optimization for Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems5 Jul 2025
- 2024Revisiting the robustness of post-hoc interpretability methods29 Jul 2024