Few-Shot Learning on Graphs: from Meta-learning to Pre-training and Prompting

Graph representation learning, a critical step in graph-centric tasks, has seen significant advancements. Earlier techniques often operate in an end-to-end setting, where performance heavily relies on the availability of ample labeled data. This constraint has spurred the emergence of few-shot learning on graphs, where only a few task-specific labels are available for each task. Given the extensive literature in this field, this survey endeavors to synthesize recent developments, provide comparative insights, and identify future directions. We systematically categorize existing studies into three major families: meta-learning approaches, pre-training approaches, and hybrid approaches, with a finer-grained classification in each family to aid readers in their method selection process. Within each category, we analyze the relationships among these methods and compare their strengths and limitations. Finally, we outline prospective future directions for few-shot learning on graphs to catalyze continued innovation in this field.