# BAED: a New Paradigm for Few-shot Graph Learning with Explanation in the Loop

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.01941 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01941/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [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)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [DeepWalk: Online Learning of Social Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1403.6652/) (2014)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02685/) (2017)
- [Pitfalls of Graph Neural Network Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.05868/) (2018)
- [Striving for Simplicity: The All Convolutional Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6806/) (2014)
- [Geom-GCN: Geometric Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05287/) (2020)
- [GNNExplainer: Generating Explanations for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03894/) (2019)
- [LINE: Large-scale Information Network Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03578/) (2015)
- [Learning from Noisy Labels with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08199/) (2020)
- [Parameterized Explainer for Graph Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04573/) (2020)
- [Explainability in Graph Neural Networks: A Taxonomic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15445/) (2020)
- [Deep Gaussian Embedding of Graphs: Unsupervised Inductive Learning via Ranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.03815/) (2017)
- [Large Scale Learning on Non-Homophilous Graphs: New Benchmarks and Strong Simple Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14446/) (2021)
- [Generalization and Representational Limits of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06157/) (2020)
- [XGNN: Towards Model-Level Explanations of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02587/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Few-shot Learning: Evolution, Applications, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06743/) (2022)
- [Explainability Techniques for Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13686/) (2019)
- [Interpreting Graph Neural Networks for NLP With Differentiable Edge Masking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00577/) (2020)
- [Higher-Order Explanations of Graph Neural Networks via Relevant Walks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03589/) (2020)
- [PubMed 200k RCT: a Dataset for Sequential Sentence Classification in Medical Abstracts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06071/) (2017)
- [Meta-GNN: On Few-shot Node Classification in Graph Meta-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.09718/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The challenges of training and inference in few-shot environments persist in the area of graph representation learning. The quality and quantity of labels are often insufficient due to the extensive expert knowledge required to annotate graph data. In this context, Few-Shot Graph Learning (FSGL) approaches have been developed over the years. Through sophisticated neural architectures and customized training pipelines, these approaches enhance model adaptability to new label distributions. However, compromises in textcolorblackthe model's robustness and interpretability can result in overfitting to noise in labeled data and degraded performance. This paper introduces the first explanation-in-the-loop framework for the FSGL problem, called BAED. We novelly employ the belief propagation algorithm to facilitate label augmentation on graphs. Then, leveraging an auxiliary graph neural network and the gradient backpropagation method, our framework effectively extracts explanatory subgraphs surrounding target nodes. The final predictions are based on these informative subgraphs while mitigating the influence of redundant information from neighboring nodes. Extensive experiments on seven benchmark datasets demonstrate superior prediction accuracy, training efficiency, and explanation quality of BAED. As a pioneer, this work highlights the potential of the explanation-based research paradigm in FSGL.