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Graph Neural Networks: Theory, Methods and Applications

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 January 2026 | Viewed by 20

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Interests: graph neural networks; computer vision; fault diagnosis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as powerful frameworks that can be used to learn representations of graph-structured data, enabling breakthroughs in diverse domains such as social network analysis, bioinformatics, recommender systems, and traffic prediction. Despite their success, significant challenges remain in terms of their theoretical foundations, scalability, interpretability, and robustness.

This Special Issue invites authors to submit high-quality original research and review articles that advance the theory, methodologies, and applications of GNNs. This includes contributions that address fundamental challenges, propose novel architectures, and explore innovative applications across interdisciplinary fields.

We welcome submissions on (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • Theoretical Advances:
    • Expressiveness and representational limits of GNNs;
    • Graph neural operators and spectral-based approaches;
    • Theoretical analysis of GNN generalization and robustness;
    • Equivariance, invariance, and symmetry in GNNs;
    • Graph representation learning and embeddings.
  • Methodological Innovations:
    • Scalable and efficient GNN architectures;
    • Self-supervised and unsupervised graph learning;
    • Dynamic and temporal graph neural networks;
    • Heterogeneous, multi-relational, and knowledge graph embeddings;
    • Explainability and interpretability in GNNs;
    • Adversarial robustness and defense strategies.
  • Applications:
    • GNNs for social networks, recommender systems, and fault diagnosis
    • Bioinformatics, drug discovery, and healthcare applications;
    • Computer vision, scene graphs, and geometric deep learning;
    • Natural language processing and knowledge graphs;
    • Financial modeling, traffic prediction, and IoT applications.

Dr. Ruonan Liu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • graph neural networks
  • graph representation learning
  • GNN architectures
  • GNN applications

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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