Neural-Symbolic Methods for Knowledge Graph Reasoning: A Survey

• Published in: ACM transactions on knowledge discovery from data 2024-11, Vol.18 (9), p.1-44, Article 225
• Main Authors: Cheng, Kewei, Ahmed, Nesreen K., Rossi, Ryan A., Willke, Theodore, Sun, Yizhou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computing methodologies; Knowledge representation and reasoning
• ISSN: 1556-4681; 1556-472X
• DOI: 10.1145/3686806

Neural symbolic knowledge graph (KG) reasoning offers a promising approach that combines the expressive power of symbolic reasoning with the learning capabilities inherent in neural networks. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of advancements, techniques, and challenges in the field of neural symbolic KG reasoning. The survey introduces the fundamental concepts of KGs and symbolic logic, followed by an exploration of three significant KG reasoning tasks: KG completion, complex query answering, and logical rule learning. For each task, we thoroughly discuss three distinct categories of methods: pure symbolic methods, pure neural approaches, and the integration of neural networks and symbolic reasoning methods known as neural-symbolic. We carefully analyze and compare the strengths and limitations of each category of methods to provide a comprehensive understanding. By synthesizing recent research contributions and identifying open research directions, this survey aims to equip researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art in neural symbolic KG reasoning, fostering future advancements in this interdisciplinary domain.