# Hybrid-Collaborative Augmentation and Contrastive Sample Adaptive-Differential Awareness for Robust Attributed Graph Clustering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02731 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02731/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Variational Graph Auto-Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07308/) (2016)
- [Contrastive Multi-View Representation Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05582/) (2020)
- [Attributed Graph Clustering: A Deep Attentional Embedding Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06532/) (2019)
- [Structural Deep Clustering Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.01633/) (2020)
- [A Survey of Knowledge Graph Reasoning on Graph Types: Static, Dynamic, and Multimodal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05767/) (2022)
- [Deep Graph Clustering via Dual Correlation Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14772/) (2021)
- [Adaptive Graph Encoder for Attributed Graph Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01594/) (2020)
- [ProGCL: Rethinking Hard Negative Mining in Graph Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02027/) (2021)
- [Deep Fusion Clustering Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09600/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Graph Representation Learning Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01855/) (2022)
- [Hard Sample Aware Network for Contrastive Deep Graph Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08665/) (2022)
- [Cluster-guided Contrastive Graph Clustering Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01098/) (2023)
- [Simple Contrastive Graph Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07865/) (2022)
- [A Survey of Deep Graph Clustering: Taxonomy, Challenge, Application, and Open Resource](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12875/) (2022)
- [Neighbor Contrastive Learning on Learnable Graph Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01404/) (2023)
- [CONVERT:Contrastive Graph Clustering with Reliable Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08963/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Contrastive Attributed Graph Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08264/) (2021)
- [GraphLearner: Graph Node Clustering with Fully Learnable Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03559/) (2022)
- [Affinity Uncertainty-based Hard Negative Mining in Graph Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.13340/) (2023)
- [AGNN: Alternating Graph-Regularized Neural Networks to Alleviate Over-Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07014/) (2023)
- [Decouple Graph Neural Networks: Train Multiple Simple GNNs Simultaneously Instead of One](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10126/) (2023)
- [DGNN: Decoupled Graph Neural Networks with Structural Consistency between Attribute and Graph Embedding Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15584/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models for Data Challenges in Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18475/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Beyond the Academic Monoculture: A Unified Framework and Industrial Perspective for Attributed Graph Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20829/) (2026)
- [From Representation to Clusters: A Contrastive Learning Approach for Attributed Hypergraph Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09370/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Due to its powerful capability of self-supervised representation learning and clustering, contrastive attributed graph clustering (CAGC) has achieved great success, which mainly depends on effective data augmentation and contrastive objective setting. However, most CAGC methods utilize edges as auxiliary information to obtain node-level embedding representation and only focus on node-level embedding augmentation. This approach overlooks edge-level embedding augmentation and the interactions between node-level and edge-level embedding augmentations across various granularity. Moreover, they often treat all contrastive sample pairs equally, neglecting the significant differences between hard and easy positive-negative sample pairs, which ultimately limits their discriminative capability. To tackle these issues, a novel robust attributed graph clustering (RAGC), incorporating hybrid-collaborative augmentation (HCA) and contrastive sample adaptive-differential awareness (CSADA), is proposed. First, node-level and edge-level embedding representations and augmentations are simultaneously executed to establish a more comprehensive similarity measurement criterion for subsequent contrastive learning. In turn, the discriminative similarity further consciously guides edge augmentation. Second, by leveraging pseudo-label information with high confidence, a CSADA strategy is elaborately designed, which adaptively identifies all contrastive sample pairs and differentially treats them by an innovative weight modulation function. The HCA and CSADA modules mutually reinforce each other in a beneficent cycle, thereby enhancing discriminability in representation learning. Comprehensive graph clustering evaluations over six benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed RAGC against several state-of-the-art CAGC methods.