Explaining GNN-based Recommendations in Logic
Summary: Introduce Makex, a logic-based explanation framework that discovers Rules for ExPlanations (REPs)—a graph pattern Q plus precondition predicates X→M(x,y)—to expose topology and feature dependencies driving GNN recommender outputs. Defines REPs via 1-WL, gives algorithms for global REP discovery and top-k local explanations, and reports superior fidelity, sparsity, and efficiency versus prior methods. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Wenfei Fan (Beihang University; Shenzhen University; University of Edinburgh)
- 2. Lihang Fan (Beihang University)
- 3. Dandan Lin (Shenzhen University)
- 4. Min Xie (Shenzhen University)
BibTeX Citation
@article{fan_vldb25,
title = {{Explaining GNN-based Recommendations in Logic}},
author = {Fan, Wenfei and Fan, Lihang and Lin, Dandan and Xie, Min},
journal = {PVLDB},
series = {{VLDB} '25},
volume = {18},
number = {3},
pages = {715--728},
doi = {10.14778/3712221.3712237},
url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3712221.3712237},
year = {2025}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 1 of 1 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,706 | Efficient GNN Training on Giant Graphs with Collective Batching and Scheduling | 2026 | VLDB | 4.9793485e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 10 of 10 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,370 | word2vec, node2vec, graph2vec, X2vec: Towards a Theory of Vector Embeddings of Structured Data | 2020 | PODS | 0.00010899399 |
| 1,941 | Interpretable Data-Based Explanations for Fairness Debugging | 2022 | SIGMOD | 9.3297671e-05 |
| 2,364 | Dependencies for Graphs | 2017 | PODS | 8.5665938e-05 |
| 3,026 | Functional Dependencies for Graphs | 2016 | SIGMOD | 7.7387829e-05 |
| 4,858 | Association Rules with Graph Patterns | 2015 | VLDB | 6.3793644e-05 |
| 6,482 | On Data-Aware Global Explainability of Graph Neural Networks | 2023 | VLDB | 5.7702646e-05 |
| 8,218 | Towards Event Prediction in Temporal Graphs | 2022 | VLDB | 5.3762638e-05 |
| 8,293 | Capturing Associations in Graphs | 2020 | VLDB | 5.3612871e-05 |
| 9,806 | Making It Tractable to Catch Duplicates and Conflicts in Graphs | 2023 | SIGMOD | 5.1257999e-05 |
| 11,724 | Enriching Recommendation Models with Logic Conditions | 2023 | SIGMOD | 4.9793485e-05 |
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