# Str-GCL: Structural Commonsense Driven Graph Contrastive Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07141 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07141/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Graph Contrastive Learning with Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13902/) (2020)
- [Deep Graph Infomax](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10341/) (2018)
- [Pitfalls of Graph Neural Network Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.05868/) (2018)
- [Revisiting Semi-Supervised Learning with Graph Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08861/) (2016)
- [Image-based Recommendations on Styles and Substitutes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04757/) (2015)
- [Contrastive Multi-View Representation Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05582/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Knowledge Graphs: Representation, Acquisition and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00388/) (2020)
- [Deep Graph Contrastive Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04131/) (2020)
- [Graph Contrastive Learning with Adaptive Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.14945/) (2020)
- [Graph Self-Supervised Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00111/) (2021)
- [Adversarial Graph Augmentation to Improve Graph Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05819/) (2021)
- [A Tutorial on Principal Component Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.1100/) (2014)
- [From Canonical Correlation Analysis to Self-supervised Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12484/) (2021)
- [Graph Barlow Twins: A self-supervised representation learning framework for graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02466/) (2021)
- [Rethinking and Scaling Up Graph Contrastive Learning: An Extremely Efficient Approach with Group Discrimination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01535/) (2022)
- [Beyond Smoothing: Unsupervised Graph Representation Learning with Edge Heterophily Discriminating](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14065/) (2022)
- [ARC: A Generalist Graph Anomaly Detector with In-Context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16771/) (2024)
- [Deep Reasoning with Knowledge Graph for Social Relationship Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00504/) (2018)
- [Towards Self-Interpretable Graph-Level Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16520/) (2023)
- [Simple and Asymmetric Graph Contrastive Learning without Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18884/) (2023)
- [Towards Graph Contrastive Learning: A Survey and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11868/) (2024)
- [PREM: A Simple Yet Effective Approach for Node-Level Graph Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11676/) (2023)
- [HomoGCL: Rethinking Homophily in Graph Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09614/) (2023)
- [Unifying Graph Contrastive Learning with Flexible Contextual Scopes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08792/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [One Prompt Fits All: Universal Graph Adaptation for Pretrained Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22416/) (2025)
- [LEDA: Latent Semantic Distribution Alignment for Multi-domain Graph Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22660/) (2026)
- [Revisiting Positive Samples in Graph Contrastive Learning: From the Perspective of Message Passing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10284/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph Contrastive Learning (GCL) is a widely adopted approach in self-supervised graph representation learning, applying contrastive objectives to produce effective representations. However, current GCL methods primarily focus on capturing implicit semantic relationships, often overlooking the structural commonsense embedded within the graph's structure and attributes, which contains underlying knowledge crucial for effective representation learning. Due to the lack of explicit information and clear guidance in general graph, identifying and integrating such structural commonsense in GCL poses a significant challenge. To address this gap, we propose a novel framework called Structural Commonsense Unveiling in Graph Contrastive Learning (Str-GCL). Str-GCL leverages first-order logic rules to represent structural commonsense and explicitly integrates them into the GCL framework. It introduces topological and attribute-based rules without altering the original graph and employs a representation alignment mechanism to guide the encoder in effectively capturing this commonsense. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to directly incorporate structural commonsense into GCL. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Str-GCL outperforms existing GCL methods, providing a new perspective on leveraging structural commonsense in graph representation learning.