Graph analytics is one of the most influential and important R&D topics in the visual analytics community. Researchers with diverse backgrounds from information visualization, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, graph drawing, and data mining have pursued graph analytics from scientific, technical, and social approaches. These studies have addressed both distinct and common challenges. Past successes and mistakes can provide valuable lessons for revising the research agenda. In this article, six researchers from four academic and research institutes identify graph analytics' fundamental challenges and present both insightful lessons learned from their experience and good practices in graph analytics research. The goal is to critically assess those lessons and shed light on how they can stimulate research and draw attention to grand challenges for graph analytics. The article also establishes principles that could lead to measurable standards and criteria for research.