The paper presents a comparative analysis of six state‑of‑the‑art counterfactual explainers for graph neural networks, focusing on methods that can both add and remove edges to alter model predictions. It evaluates these explainers across diverse real‑world and synthetic datasets, covering binary and multi‑class graph and node classification tasks, using a range of quantitative and qualitative metrics. The study highlights the trade‑offs between explanation size, coverage, and quality, aiming to pinpoint each method’s strengths and weaknesses to inform future research.
By Maria Myrto Villia, Filippos Gouidis, Theodore Patkos, Panos Trahanias
arXiv:2608. 12083v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) achieve strong predictive performance on graph-structured data across domains such as chemistry, biology, and network analysis, yet they provide no intrinsic explanation of their predictions.
By David Bechtoldt, Sidney Bender
arXiv:2606. 05756v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have demonstrated remarkable performance across a range of applications involving graph-structured data, particularly in high-stakes domains.
By Jialiang Yin, Zheng Zhao, Linsey Pang, Bo Dong, Bin Shi, Jiaxing Zhang
arXiv:2606. 03495v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heterogeneous graph neural networks (HGNNs) have demonstrated remarkable performance in modeling complex relational data, however their interpretability in high-stakes applications remains a critical challenge.
By Zongrui Li, Yuhang Zhao, Ying Zhao, Yuanzhao Guo, Qiang Huang, Yuan Tian
arXiv:2606. 05972v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal graphs provide a high-level language for making mechanisms transparent.
By Nirit Nussbaum-Hoffer, Nitay Calderon, Liat Ein-Dor, Roi Reichart
RAW-Explainer is a new explainability method designed for path reasoning graph neural networks used in knowledge graph completion. It produces connected, concise, and interpretable subgraph explanations for link prediction by leveraging heterogeneous information and a random walk objective. The approach also addresses distribution shift when evaluating small explanatory subgraphs with a robust evaluator, achieving a balance between explanation quality and computational efficiency on standard benchmarks.
By Ryoji Kubo, Samyam Lamichhane, Djellel Difallah
The paper introduces MPGE, a Multi‑Perspective Graph Explainer that provides three complementary explanations—factual support, counterfactual sensitivity, and exemplar tolerance—for graph neural network predictions on molecular data. It formulates a shared constrained optimization that balances prediction preservation, compactness, and edit cost, and extends CF‑GNNExplainer to learn symmetric edge rankings for counterfactuals. Experiments on several benchmark datasets show that factual masks retain a small fraction of edges while counterfactual and exemplar explanations achieve high coverage, demonstrating the method’s ability to reveal model behavior without claiming chemical validity.
By Mahtab Sarvmaili
arXiv:2607. 22045v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Counterfactual explanations are a prominent approach in explainable artificial intelligence (xAI), providing actionable guidance on what input changes would alter a model's prediction to a desired outcome.
By Oleksii Furman, {\L}ukasz Lenkiewicz, Marcel Musia{\l}ek, Maciej Zi\k{e}ba
arXiv:2608.23835v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Real-world decision-making in public health and social science can greatly benefit from predictive models, yet translating predictions into effective i...
By Mulin Tian, Ajitesh Srivastava
arXiv:2608. 25897v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Explaining deep learning models operating on time series data is crucial in various applications that require transparent and interpretable insights into model behavior.
By Xu Zheng, Zichuan Liu, Zhuomin Chen, Mayur Akewar, Janki Bhimani, Jason Liu, Mo Sha, Jingchao Ni, Wei Cheng, Dongsheng Luo
GraphVerse is a new benchmark for multimodal large language models that tests visual graph reasoning by combining perception, graph-based visual inputs, and multi-step reasoning. It introduces Graph-centric Image Editing strategies to actively challenge models while preserving semantics, and offers a VGR-Score metric that evaluates reasoning quality beyond simple answer accuracy. Experiments show current models have limitations in VGR and demonstrate the effectiveness of GraphVerse for broader multimodal reasoning tasks.
By Yuanfu Sun, Yuanhang Ren, Kang Li, Chuanhao Ji, Jiaxi Li, Jiajin Liu, Ninghao Liu, Qiaoyu Tan
arXiv:2607. 29614v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid adoption of deep learning models in high-risk domains has intensified the need for trustworthy Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI).
By Christian Oliva, Luis F. Lago-Fern\'andez