Papers › Directional Graph Networks
Directional Graph Networks
Dominique Beaini, Saro Passaro, Vincent Létourneau, William L. Hamilton, Gabriele Corso, Pietro Liò
The lack of anisotropic kernels in graph neural networks (GNNs) strongly limits their expressiveness, contributing to well-known issues such as over-smoothing. To overcome this limitation, we propose the first globally consistent anisotropic kernels for GNNs, allowing for graph convolutions that are defined according to topologicaly-derived directional flows. First, by defining a vector field in the graph, we develop a method of applying directional derivatives and smoothing by projecting node-specific messages into the field. Then, we propose the use of the Laplacian eigenvectors as such vector field. We show that the method generalizes CNNs on an n-dimensional grid and is provably more discriminative than standard GNNs regarding the Weisfeiler-Lehman 1-WL test. We evaluate our method on different standard benchmarks and see a relative error reduction of 8% on the CIFAR10 graph dataset and 11% to 32% on the molecular ZINC dataset, and a relative increase in precision of 1.6% on the MolPCBA dataset. An important outcome of this work is that it enables graph networks to embed directions in an unsupervised way, thus allowing a better representation of the anisotropic features in different physical or biological problems.
In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.
For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2010.02863")
Code
Syntology Ran 6 of 14 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 8 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 3 ran · honoured contract; 1 ran · violated contract; 2 ran · our draft was wrong.
By repository: community (archive-listed): 14 samples from 1 repository, 6 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
14 samples harvested; 6 ran; 3 honoured the contract we drafted; 8 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.
Licence: 0 of the 14 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.
Harvested from gbouritsas/gsn. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.
Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.
Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.
fe76e55f0b804b7b · report
f72434c0dcd5d11b · report
5d07dbe669b9f73a · report
d0d453f04b18e8f1 · report
2d32c33e16bad56e · report
f017532fc389cbfe · report
ee86c81b47055403 · report
24fa352e05630952 · report
a79bba4bc6411d00 · report
831368bc983a71e0 · report
8c86e6abd3cdd4c4 · report
94c293b9defb4188 · report
fa9cf77a40a3bfae · report
77a61130d1c9fd6b · report
Tasks
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
Ranks are positions in the archive's leaderboards as they stood at the 2025-07-28 snapshot. Results published since then are not among these rows, so a rank here is not a current standing.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections