# A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Summarization with Graph Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06114 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06114/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 75 of its 179 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Feb 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 75)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0473/) (2014)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks on Graphs with Fast Localized Spectral Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09375/) (2016)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [Graph Neural Networks: A Review of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08434/) (2018)
- [DeepWalk: Online Learning of Social Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1403.6652/) (2014)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Variational Graph Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07308/) (2016)
- [How Attentive are Graph Attention Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14491/) (2021)
- [Gated Graph Sequence Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05493/) (2015)
- [GraphSAINT: Graph Sampling Based Inductive Learning Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04931/) (2019)
- [FastGCN: Fast Learning with Graph Convolutional Networks via Importance Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10247/) (2018)
- [Variational Dropout and the Local Reparameterization Trick](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02557/) (2015)
- [GraphMAE: Self-Supervised Masked Graph Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10803/) (2022)
- [Self-Attention Graph Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08082/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Convolutional Neural Networks: Analysis, Applications, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02806/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04202/) (2018)
- [SIGN: Scalable Inception Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11198/) (2020)
- [Representation Learning for Dynamic Graphs: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11485/) (2019)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Graph Embedding: Problems, Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07604/) (2017)
- [Enhancing Graph Neural Network-based Fraud Detectors against Camouflaged Fraudsters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08692/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Anomaly Detection with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07178/) (2021)
- [CayleyNets: Graph Convolutional Neural Networks with Complex Rational Spectral Filters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07664/) (2017)
- [Adaptive Sampling Towards Fast Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05343/) (2018)
- [Graph Condensation for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07580/) (2021)
- [Comparing Kullback-Leibler Divergence and Mean Squared Error Loss in Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.08919/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Graph Condensation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11720/) (2024)
- [Demystifying Higher-Order Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12841/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Breast Cancer Detection with Vision Transformers and Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13372/) (2025)
- [Aggregating User Preferences while Ensuring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion using Graph Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.07128/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As large-scale graphs become more widespread, more and more computational challenges with extracting, processing, and interpreting large graph data are being exposed. It is therefore natural to search for ways to summarize these expansive graphs while preserving their key characteristics. In the past, most graph summarization techniques sought to capture the most important part of a graph statistically. However, today, the high dimensionality and complexity of modern graph data are making deep learning techniques more popular. Hence, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of progress in deep learning summarization techniques that rely on graph neural networks (GNNs). Our investigation includes a review of the current state-of-the-art approaches, including recurrent GNNs, convolutional GNNs, graph autoencoders, and graph attention networks. A new burgeoning line of research is also discussed where graph reinforcement learning is being used to evaluate and improve the quality of graph summaries. Additionally, the survey provides details of benchmark datasets, evaluation metrics, and open-source tools that are often employed in experimentation settings, along with a detailed comparison, discussion, and takeaways for the research community focused on graph summarization. Finally, the survey concludes with a number of open research challenges to motivate further study in this area.