Papers › Self-Explainable Graph Transformer for Link Sign Prediction

Self-Explainable Graph Transformer for Link Sign Prediction

16 Aug 2024arXiv:2408.08754archive 2025-07-28

Lu Li, Jiale Liu, Xingyu Ji, Maojun Wang, Zeyu Zhang

Signed Graph Neural Networks (SGNNs) have been shown to be effective in analyzing complex patterns in real-world situations where positive and negative links coexist. However, SGNN models suffer from poor explainability, which limit their adoptions in critical scenarios that require understanding the rationale behind predictions. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no research work on the explainability of the SGNN models. Our goal is to address the explainability of decision-making for the downstream task of link sign prediction specific to signed graph neural networks. Since post-hoc explanations are not derived directly from the models, they may be biased and misrepresent the true explanations. Therefore, in this paper we introduce a Self-Explainable Signed Graph transformer (SE-SGformer) framework, which can not only outputs explainable information while ensuring high prediction accuracy. Specifically, We propose a new Transformer architecture for signed graphs and theoretically demonstrate that using positional encoding based on signed random walks has greater expressive power than current SGNN methods and other positional encoding graph Transformer-based approaches. We constructs a novel explainable decision process by discovering the K-nearest (farthest) positive (negative) neighbors of a node to replace the neural network-based decoder for predicting edge signs. These K positive (negative) neighbors represent crucial information about the formation of positive (negative) edges between nodes and thus can serve as important explanatory information in the decision-making process. We conducted experiments on several real-world datasets to validate the effectiveness of SE-SGformer, which outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by improving 2.2\% prediction accuracy and 73.1\% explainablity accuracy in the best-case scenario.

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

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="2408.08754")

Code

Syntology Ran 3 of 9 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 6 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 3 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 9 samples from 1 repository, 3 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

liule66/SE-SGformer officialpytorch report

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

9 samples harvested; 3 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 6 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.

3ran
6unverified

Licence: 9 of the 9 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 liule66/SE-SGformer. “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.

degree_offset liule66/SE-SGformer/tmp.py official repository ran no licence file found · pointer only · d74184b07a6c9e06 · report
read_graph liule66/SE-SGformer/reader.py official repository ran no licence file found · pointer only · e96f1e60a87dfb52 · report
semi_row_normalize liule66/SE-SGformer/normalizer.py official repository ran no licence file found · pointer only · ee1cb03a0935f392 · report
index2adj liule66/SE-SGformer/tmp.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · ea48315a74f98a02 · report
iterate liule66/SE-SGformer/iterator.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · c8a5c966037e3872 · report
load_data liule66/SE-SGformer/discriminator.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · dacf23dedb2095e6 · report
load_data liule66/SE-SGformer/tmp.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · fc3930430dccabf8 · report
main liule66/SE-SGformer/discriminator.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · 2de872249d4741db · report
process_edges liule66/SE-SGformer/discriminator.py official repository unverified no licence file found · pointer only · c21f0fabef38e402 · report

Tasks

Decision MakingLink Sign PredictionPrediction

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Absolute Position EncodingsAdamAttentionBPEDense ConnectionsDropoutGraph TransformerLabel SmoothingLapEigenLaplacian PELayer NormalizationLinear LayerMulti-Head AttentionPosition-Wise Feed-Forward LayerResidual ConnectionSoftmaxTransformer

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