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AttriReBoost: A Gradient-Free Propagation Optimization Method for Cold-Start Mitigation in Attribute Missing Graphs

delete2026-04-16
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PRE
AI
M
Mengran Li
C
Chaojun Ding
J
Junzhou Chen
W
Wenbin Xing
C
Cong Ye
R
Ronghui Zhang
S
Songlin Zhuang
胡笳 cover
胡笳 (Jia Hu)
T
Tony Z. Qiu
高会军 (Huijun Gao)
DOI:10.1109/tcyb.2026.3681613delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
In real-world graphs, node attributes are often incomplete due to acquisition costs or privacy restrictions, reducing representation quality and harming downstream predictions in graph neural networks (GNNs). A common remedy is feature-propagation-based imputation. However, cold-start effects arising from attribute resetting and low-degree nodes impede effective propagation and convergence in these methods. To address these challenges, we propose <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">AttriReBoost</i> (ARB), a propagation-based method that mitigates cold-start issues in attribute-missing graphs. ARB enhances global feature propagation (FP) by redefining initial boundary conditions and strategically integrating virtual edges, thereby improving node connectivity and ensuring stable and efficient convergence. The method supports gradient-free attribute reconstruction with low computational overhead, and we provide a rigorous convergence analysis. Extensive experiments on several real-world benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of ARB, achieving an average accuracy improvement of 5.11% over state-of-the-art methods. In addition, ARB exhibits remarkable computational efficiency, processing a large-scale graph with 2.44 million nodes in just 16 s on a single GPU. Our code is available at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://github.com/limengran98/ARB</uri>
Keywords:
Attribute-missing graphs
cold-start problem
feature propagation (FP)
graph learning

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics cover
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
IF:
10.5
Papers:
1.1W
Citations:
5.0W

Organization

S
Sun Yat-Sen University
Scholars:
7.8K
Papers: 2.1K
Citations: 0
Y
yongjiang laboratory
Scholars:
327
Papers: 251
Citations: 2
U
university of alberta
Scholars:
5.0W
Papers: 4.9W
Citations: 64
T
tongji university
Scholars:
7.5W
Papers: 5.8W
Citations: 98
H
Harbin Institute of Technology
Scholars:
1.1W
Papers: 3.8K
Citations: 8.5W
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