Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bugueño, Margarita, de Melo, Gerard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00864
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916877109821440
author Bugueño, Margarita
de Melo, Gerard
author_facet Bugueño, Margarita
de Melo, Gerard
contents In document classification, graph-based models effectively capture document structure, overcoming sequence length limitations and enhancing contextual understanding. However, most existing graph document representations rely on heuristics, domain-specific rules, or expert knowledge. Unlike previous approaches, we propose a method to learn data-driven graph structures, eliminating the need for manual design and reducing domain dependence. Our approach constructs homogeneous weighted graphs with sentences as nodes, while edges are learned via a self-attention model that identifies dependencies between sentence pairs. A statistical filtering strategy aims to retain only strongly correlated sentences, improving graph quality while reducing the graph size. Experiments on three document classification datasets demonstrate that learned graphs consistently outperform heuristic-based graphs, achieving higher accuracy and $F_1$ score. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the effectiveness of the statistical filtering in improving classification robustness. These results highlight the potential of automatic graph generation over traditional heuristic approaches and open new directions for broader applications in NLP.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_00864
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rethinking Graph-Based Document Classification: Learning Data-Driven Structures Beyond Heuristic Approaches
Bugueño, Margarita
de Melo, Gerard
Computation and Language
In document classification, graph-based models effectively capture document structure, overcoming sequence length limitations and enhancing contextual understanding. However, most existing graph document representations rely on heuristics, domain-specific rules, or expert knowledge. Unlike previous approaches, we propose a method to learn data-driven graph structures, eliminating the need for manual design and reducing domain dependence. Our approach constructs homogeneous weighted graphs with sentences as nodes, while edges are learned via a self-attention model that identifies dependencies between sentence pairs. A statistical filtering strategy aims to retain only strongly correlated sentences, improving graph quality while reducing the graph size. Experiments on three document classification datasets demonstrate that learned graphs consistently outperform heuristic-based graphs, achieving higher accuracy and $F_1$ score. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the effectiveness of the statistical filtering in improving classification robustness. These results highlight the potential of automatic graph generation over traditional heuristic approaches and open new directions for broader applications in NLP.
title Rethinking Graph-Based Document Classification: Learning Data-Driven Structures Beyond Heuristic Approaches
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00864