Graph-R1: Incentivizing the Zero-Shot Graph Learning Capability in LLMs via Explicit Reasoning (2508.17387v1)

Abstract: Generalizing to unseen graph tasks without task-pecific supervision remains challenging. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are limited by fixed label spaces, while LLMs lack structural inductive biases. Recent advances in Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) provide a zero-shot alternative via explicit, long chain-of-thought reasoning. Inspired by this, we propose a GNN-free approach that reformulates graph tasks--node classification, link prediction, and graph classification--as textual reasoning problems solved by LRMs. We introduce the first datasets with detailed reasoning traces for these tasks and develop Graph-R1, a reinforcement learning framework that leverages task-specific rethink templates to guide reasoning over linearized graphs. Experiments demonstrate that Graph-R1 outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in zero-shot settings, producing interpretable and effective predictions. Our work highlights the promise of explicit reasoning for graph learning and provides new resources for future research.