# Investigating Instruction Tuning Large Language Models on Graphs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.05457 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05457/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Mistral 7B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06825/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [Multitask Prompted Training Enables Zero-Shot Task Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08207/) (2021)
- [Gemma: Open Models Based on Gemini Research and Technology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08295/) (2024)
- [The Flan Collection: Designing Data and Methods for Effective Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13688/) (2023)
- [WizardCoder: Empowering Code Large Language Models with Evol-Instruct](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08568/) (2023)
- [Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10792/) (2023)
- [Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05463/) (2023)
- [Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02707/) (2023)
- [Exploring the Potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03393/) (2023)
- [Can Language Models Solve Graph Problems in Natural Language?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10037/) (2023)
- [Language is All a Graph Needs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07134/) (2023)
- [GPT4Graph: Can Large Language Models Understand Graph Structured Data ? An Empirical Evaluation and Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15066/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models on Graphs: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02783/) (2023)
- [GraphFormers: GNN-nested Transformers for Representation Learning on Textual Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02605/) (2021)
- [Node Feature Extraction by Self-Supervised Multi-scale Neighborhood Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00064/) (2021)
- [Harnessing Explanations: LLM-to-LM Interpreter for Enhanced Text-Attributed Graph Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19523/) (2023)
- [GraphText: Graph Reasoning in Text Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01089/) (2023)
- [UniGraph: Learning a Unified Cross-Domain Foundation Model for Text-Attributed Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13630/) (2024)
- [GraphInstruct: Empowering Large Language Models with Graph Understanding and Reasoning Capability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04483/) (2024)
- [InstructGraph: Boosting Large Language Models via Graph-centric Instruction Tuning and Preference Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08785/) (2024)
- [TextGNN: Improving Text Encoder via Graph Neural Network in Sponsored Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06323/) (2021)
- [Patton: Language Model Pretraining on Text-Rich Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12268/) (2023)
- [Instruct and Extract: Instruction Tuning for On-Demand Information Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16040/) (2023)
- [Heterformer: Transformer-based Deep Node Representation Learning on Heterogeneous Text-Rich Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10282/) (2022)
- [Edgeformers: Graph-Empowered Transformers for Representation Learning on Textual-Edge Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11050/) (2023)
- [The Effect of Metadata on Scientific Literature Tagging: A Cross-Field Cross-Model Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03341/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [GRAPHGPT-O: Synergistic Multimodal Comprehension and Generation on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11925/) (2025)
- [Exploring Graph Learning Tasks with Pure LLMs: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Investigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18771/) (2025)
- [Thinking with Knowledge Graphs: Enhancing LLM Reasoning Through Structured Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10654/) (2024)
- [Generalizable LLM Learning of Graph Synthetic Data with Post-training Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00845/) (2025)
- [GLOW: Graph-Language Co-Encoding for Agentic Workflow Performance Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15751/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Inspired by the recent advancements of Large Language Models (LLMs) in NLP tasks, there's growing interest in applying LLMs to graph-related tasks. This study delves into the capabilities of instruction-following LLMs for engaging with real-world graphs, aiming to offer empirical insights into how LLMs can effectively interact with graphs and generalize across graph tasks. We begin by constructing a dataset designed for instruction tuning, which comprises a diverse collection of 79 graph-related tasks from academic and e-commerce domains, featuring 44,240 training instances and 18,960 test samples. Utilizing this benchmark, our initial investigation focuses on identifying the optimal graph representation that serves as a conduit for LLMs to understand complex graph structures. Our findings indicate that JSON format for graph representation consistently outperforms natural language and code formats across various LLMs and graph types. Furthermore, we examine the key factors that influence the generalization abilities of instruction-tuned LLMs by evaluating their performance on both in-domain and out-of-domain graph tasks.