# Selectivity Matters: Source Node Influence Pruning for Unsupervised Graph Domain Adaptation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17668 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17668/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [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)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [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)
- [DropEdge: Towards Deep Graph Convolutional Networks on Node Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10903/) (2019)
- [Multi-scale Attributed Node Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13021/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Unsupervised Deep Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02849/) (2018)
- [Graph Transfer Learning via Adversarial Domain Adaptation with Graph Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01541/) (2019)
- [Structural Re-weighting Improves Graph Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03221/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Deep Network Embedding for Cross-network Node Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07366/) (2020)
- [Non-IID Transfer Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08174/) (2022)
- [Graph Neural Networks are Inherently Good Generalizers: Insights by Bridging GNNs and MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09034/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Propagation for Unsupervised Graph Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05660/) (2024)
- [Pairwise Alignment Improves Graph Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01092/) (2024)
- [SPA: A Graph Spectral Alignment Perspective for Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17594/) (2023)
- [Smoothness Really Matters: A Simple Yet Effective Approach for Unsupervised Graph Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11654/) (2024)
- [Graph Domain Adaptation: Challenges, Progress and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00904/) (2024)
- [Can Modifying Data Address Graph Domain Adaptation?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19311/) (2024)
- [Centrality-Based Node Feature Augmentation for Robust Network Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12751/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Graph Pruning for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11531/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unsupervised Graph Domain Adaptation (UGDA) aims to facilitate knowledge transfer from a labeled source graph to an unlabeled target graph by mitigating cross-domain distribution shifts. Existing methods primarily focus on node-level feature alignment in latent spaces, relying on the implicit assumption that all source nodes contribute positively to the alignment. However, this assumption often fails because a node's semantic information is intrinsically coupled with its topological graph structure. Due to structural shifts, source nodes with severe structural deviations (e.g., structural outliers) lack semantic counterparts in the target graph, and forcing alignment on them introduces severe noise and causes negative transfer. To bridge this gap, we argue that selective source node utilization is superior to full-graph training, thereby shifting the research paradigm from feature-level alignment to data-level refinement. To this end, we propose Source Node Influence Pruning (SNIP), a novel model-agnostic, data-centric refinement framework. Specifically, SNIP quantifies the structural discrepancy between individual source nodes and the target domain by integrating multiple centrality measures, assigning each source node an influence score. A rank-based normalization mechanism is further employed to eliminate scale variations across different measures, allowing SNIP to effectively identify and filter out structurally incompatible nodes with low influence scores. As a plug-and-play method, SNIP constructs a refined "sub-source" graph that is inherently more beneficial for subsequent alignment. Comprehensive experiments across eight transfer scenarios on five real-world datasets demonstrate that SNIP consistently outperforms competitive baselines and significantly enhances adaptation performance, validating the superiority of selective node utilization over full-graph training.