A Survey of Deep Graph Clustering: Taxonomy, Challenge, Application, and Open Resource
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Abstract (arXiv)
Graph clustering, which aims to divide nodes in the graph into several distinct clusters, is a fundamental yet challenging task. Benefiting from the powerful representation capability of deep learning, deep graph clustering methods have achieved great success in recent years. However, the corresponding survey paper is relatively scarce, and it is imminent to make a summary of this field. From this motivation, we conduct a comprehensive survey of deep graph clustering. Firstly, we introduce formulaic definition, evaluation, and development in this field. Secondly, the taxonomy of deep graph clustering methods is presented based on four different criteria, including graph type, network architecture, learning paradigm, and clustering method. Thirdly, we carefully analyze the existing methods via extensive experiments and summarize the challenges and opportunities from five perspectives, including graph data quality, stability, scalability, discriminative capability, and unknown cluster number. Besides, the applications of deep graph clustering methods in six domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, recommendation systems, social network analyses, bioinformatics, and medical science, are presented. Last but not least, this paper provides open resource supports, including 1) a collection (urlhttps://github.com/yueliu1999/Awesome-Deep-Graph-Clustering) of state-of-the-art deep graph clustering methods (papers, codes, and datasets) and 2) a unified framework (urlhttps://github.com/Marigoldwu/A-Unified-Framework-for-Deep-Attribute-Graph-Clustering) of deep graph clustering. We hope this work can serve as a quick guide and help researchers overcome challenges in this vibrant field.
Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 86 of its 199 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Nov 2022.
Builds on
86 of 199 references.
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50 most cited of 86 All 86 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 6; 2025: 8; 2026: 10.
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- 2024Reliable Node Similarity Matrix Guided Contrastive Graph Clusteringcited by 12
- 2023One-step Multi-view Clustering with Diverse Representationcited by 10
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- 2026Ensemble of Unsupervised Deep Learning for Clustering Imbalanced Tabular Data31 Jul 2026
- 2026ComNetX: Local Hierarchical Adaptation for Dynamic Community Detection10 Jul 2026
- 2026KAT-Coder-V2.5 Technical Report6 Jul 2026
- 2026Bridge the Gaps: Heterogeneous Attributed Graph Clustering via Quaternion Representation Learning22 Jun 2026
- 2026CLUBench: A Clustering Benchmark28 May 2026
- 2026Robustness of Graph Self-Supervised Learning to Real-World Noise: A Case Study on Text-Driven Biomedical Graphs6 May 2026
- 2026Beyond the Academic Monoculture: A Unified Framework and Industrial Perspective for Attributed Graph Clustering21 Mar 2026
- 2026Bridging Academia and Industry: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Attributed Graph Clustering9 Feb 2026
- 2025Stochastic Deep Graph Clustering for Practical Group Formation4 Nov 2025
- 2025Hybrid-Collaborative Augmentation and Contrastive Sample Adaptive-Differential Awareness for Robust Attributed Graph Clustering3 Oct 2025
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- 2025Divide-Then-Rule: A Cluster-Driven Hierarchical Interpolator for Attribute-Missing Graphs12 Jul 2025
- 2025Scalable Attribute-Missing Graph Clustering via Neighborhood Differentiation9 Jul 2025
- 2025ASIL: Augmented Structural Information Learning for Deep Graph Clustering in Hyperbolic Space14 Apr 2025
- 2024THESAURUS: Contrastive Graph Clustering by Swapping Fused Gromov-Wasserstein Couplings16 Dec 2024
- 2024Spectral Subspace Clustering for Attributed Graphs17 Nov 2024
- 2024Structure-enhanced Contrastive Learning for Graph Clustering19 Aug 2024
- 2024Reliable Node Similarity Matrix Guided Contrastive Graph Clustering7 Aug 2024
- 2024textttSynC: Synergistic Boosting of Structure and Representation for Deep Graph Clustering22 Jun 2024
- 2024End-to-end Learnable Clustering for Intent Learning in Recommendation11 Jan 2024
- 2023One-step Multi-view Clustering with Diverse Representation8 Jun 2023
- 2023SARF: Aliasing Relation Assisted Self-Supervised Learning for Few-shot Relation Reasoning20 Apr 2023
- 2026KAT-Coder-V2.5 Technical Reportcited by 3
- 2026KAT-Coder-V2.5 Technical Report6 Jul 2026
- 2024Reliable Node Similarity Matrix Guided Contrastive Graph Clusteringcited by 12
- 2023One-step Multi-view Clustering with Diverse Representationcited by 10
- 2024End-to-end Learnable Clustering for Intent Learning in Recommendationcited by 10
- 2023SARF: Aliasing Relation Assisted Self-Supervised Learning for Few-shot Relation Reasoningcited by 9
- 2024Spectral Subspace Clustering for Attributed Graphscited by 6
- 2024THESAURUS: Contrastive Graph Clustering by Swapping Fused Gromov-Wasserstein Couplingscited by 5
- 2025ASIL: Augmented Structural Information Learning for Deep Graph Clustering in Hyperbolic Spacecited by 4
- 2026Bridging Academia and Industry: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Attributed Graph Clusteringcited by 3
- 2024textttSynC: Synergistic Boosting of Structure and Representation for Deep Graph Clusteringcited by 2
- 2025Scalable Attribute-Missing Graph Clustering via Neighborhood Differentiationcited by 2
- 2025Effective Clustering for Large Multi-Relational Graphscited by 2
- 2025Hybrid-Collaborative Augmentation and Contrastive Sample Adaptive-Differential Awareness for Robust Attributed Graph Clusteringcited by 2
12 most cited of 25 All 25 (JSON)
- 2026Compactness and Consistency: A Conjoint Framework for Deep Graph Clustering8 Oct 2026
- 2026Towards Adaptive Federated Graph Clustering: A Global Community-aware Contrastive Learning-based Approach1 Aug 2026
- 2026Ensemble of Unsupervised Deep Learning for Clustering Imbalanced Tabular Data31 Jul 2026
- 2026ComNetX: Local Hierarchical Adaptation for Dynamic Community Detection10 Jul 2026
- 2026Bridge the Gaps: Heterogeneous Attributed Graph Clustering via Quaternion Representation Learning22 Jun 2026
- 2026CLUBench: A Clustering Benchmark28 May 2026
- 2026Robustness of Graph Self-Supervised Learning to Real-World Noise: A Case Study on Text-Driven Biomedical Graphs6 May 2026
- 2026Beyond the Academic Monoculture: A Unified Framework and Industrial Perspective for Attributed Graph Clustering21 Mar 2026
- 2026Bridging Academia and Industry: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Attributed Graph Clustering9 Feb 2026
- 2025Stochastic Deep Graph Clustering for Practical Group Formation4 Nov 2025
- 2025Hybrid-Collaborative Augmentation and Contrastive Sample Adaptive-Differential Awareness for Robust Attributed Graph Clustering3 Oct 2025
- 2025Community detection robustness of graph neural networks29 Sep 2025
12 newest of 25 All 25 (JSON)