Addressing imbalance in graph datasets: Introducing GATE-GNN with graph ensemble weight attention and transfer learning for enhanced node classification

Significant challenges arise when Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) try to deal with uneven data. Specifically in signed and weighted graph structures. This makes classification tasks less effective. Within the GNN context, researchers have found traditional solutions like resampling, reweighting, and synthetic sample generation to be inadequate. GATE-GNN, a novel architecture designed specifically for imbalanced datasets, overcomes these limitations. GATE-GNN integrates an ensemble of network modules that harness the spatial features of graph networks and effectively utilise embedding information from earlier layers. This unique approach not only bolsters generalisation by reducing volatility. It also refines the optimisation algorithm, resulting in more accurate and stable classification outcomes. We rigorously tested the effectiveness of GATE-GNN on four widely recognised datasets: Cora, NELL, Citeseer, and PubMed. We performed a comparative analysis against established methods such as Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN), Graph Sample and Aggregate (GraphSAGE), Propagation Multilayer Perceptron PMLP), Imbalanced Node Sampling GNN (INS-GNN), GNN-Curriculum Learning (GNN-CL) and Graph Attention Networks (GAT). Empirical results demonstrate that GATE-GNN significantly outperforms these existing models, achieving an average improvement in classification accuracy of approximately 5%–10% over the previous best results. Additionally, GATE-GNN presents a marked reduction in training time. This underscores its efficiency and suitability for practical applications in imbalanced graph data scenarios. Implementation of the proposed GATE-GNN can be accessed here https://github.com/afofanah/GATE-GNN.