Refining Norms: A Post-hoc Framework for OOD Detection in Graph Neural Networks

Jiawei Gu, Ziyue Qiao, Zechao Li

Keywords: graph neural network; out of distribution detection

Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly deployed in mission-critical tasks, yet they often encounter inputs that lie outside their training distribution, leading to unreliable or overconfident predictions. To address this limitation, we present RAGNOR (Robust Aggregation Graph Norm for Outlier Recognition), a post-hoc approach that leverages embedding norms for robust out-of-distribution (OOD) detection on both node-level and graph-level tasks. Unlike previous methods designed primarily for image domains, RAGNOR directly tackles the relational challenges intrinsic to graphs: local contamination by anomalous neighbors, disparate norm scales across classes or roles, and insufficient references for boundary or low-degree nodes. By combining global Z-score normalization, median-based local aggregation, and multi-hop blending, RAGNOR effectively refines raw norm signals into robust OOD scores while incurring minimal overhead and requiring no retraining of the original GNN. Experimental evaluations on multiple benchmarks demonstrate that RAGNOR not only achieves competitive or superior detection performance compared to alternative techniques, but also provides an intuitive, modular design that can be readily integrated into existing graph pipelines.

Primary Area: Deep learning (e.g., architectures, generative models, optimization for deep networks, foundation models, LLMs)

Submission Number: 4204