Information Retrieval

Also known as IR

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Overview

Information retrieval develops methods for finding useful documents, passages, products, tables, code, and multimedia in response to a user's query. Systems range from lexical methods such as BM25 and learned sparse retrieval to dense embeddings, late-interaction models, hybrid ranking, and graph-based or agentic search. These methods support applications including web search, recommendation, and retrieval-augmented generation, where retrieved evidence must be both relevant and sufficient for the task. A central challenge is balancing accuracy with speed and cost: semantic similarity can miss structured, compositional, or domain-specific evidence, and strong retrieval scores do not always lead to useful answers.

Latest papers

CardsList

476 papers61 papers in the last four weeks, up 36% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

  1. Structured Distillation for Personalized Agent Memory: 11x Token Reduction with Retrieval Preservation

    Mar 13, 2026Sydney LewisLLM Agent MemoryContext Distillation

  2. Test-Time Strategies for More Efficient and Accurate Agentic RAG

    Mar 12, 2026Brian Zhang, Deepti Guntur, Zhiyang Zuo +7Retrieval-Augmented GenerationAgentic RAG

    University of Massachusetts Amherst · Adobe Research

  3. A Systematic Study of Pseudo-Relevance Feedback with LLMs

    Mar 11, 2026Nour Jedidi, Jimmy LinInformation Retrieval

    University of Waterloo Waterloo, ON, Canada

  4. Beyond Single-Score Ranking: Facet-Aware Reranking for Controllable Diversity in Paper Recommendation

    Mar 11, 2026Duan Ming TaoRecommender SystemsInformation Retrieval

    EECS International Graduate Program, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

  5. Beyond Static: Related Questions Retrieval Through Conversations in Community Question Answering

    Mar 9, 2026Xiao Ao, Jie Zou, Yibiao Wei +2Information RetrievalQuestion Answering

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China · School of Management Science and Engineering, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

  6. Amortized Maximum Inner Product Search with Learned Support Functions

    Mar 9, 2026Theo X. Olausson, João Monteiro, Michal Klein +1Amortized InferenceInformation Retrieval

    Apple

  7. SeDa: A Unified System for Dataset Discovery and Multi-Entity Augmented Semantic Exploration

    Mar 8, 2026Kan Ling, Zhen Qin, Yichi Zhu +3Dataset DiscoveryInformation Retrieval

    East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

  8. Rethinking Deep Research from the Perspective of Web Content Distribution Matching

    Mar 7, 2026Zixuan Yu, Zhenheng Tang, Tongliang Liu +3Deep Research AgentsAgentic Search

    School of Computer science and engineering, Sun Yat-sen University · CSE, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Sydney AI Centre, The University of Sydney +3

  9. Fine-Grained Table Retrieval Through the Lens of Complex Queries

    Mar 7, 2026Wojciech Kosiuk, Xingyu Ji, Yeounoh Chung +2Table RetrievalInformation Retrieval

    University of Amsterdam · UC Berkeley · Google +1

  10. StratRAG: A Multi-Hop Retrieval Evaluation Dataset for Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems

    Mar 6, 2026Aryan PatodiyaMulti-Hop RetrievalRAG Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA, USA

  11. Efficient, Property-Aligned Fan-Out Retrieval via RL-Compiled Diffusion

    Mar 6, 2026Pengcheng Jiang, Judith Yue Li, Moonkyung Ryu +8Information RetrievalGenerative Retrieval

    Google Research · University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

  12. Sensitivity-Aware Retrieval-Augmented Intent Clarification

    Mar 6, 2026Maik LarooijConversational SearchRAG Security

    ICAI OpenGov Lab x IRLab, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  13. Nepali Passport Question Answering: A Low-Resource Dataset for Public Service Applications

    Mar 4, 2026Funghang Limbu Begha, Praveen Acharya, Bal Krishna BalInformation RetrievalQuestion Answering

    ILPRL, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal · School of Computing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

  14. Scaling Retrieval Augmented Generation with RAG Fusion: Lessons from an Industry Deployment

    Mar 2, 2026Luigi Medrano, Arush Verma, Mukul ChhabraRetrieval-Augmented GenerationRAG Evaluation

    Dell Technologies, Austin, TX, USA

  15. LaSER: Internalizing Explicit Reasoning into Latent Space for Dense Retrieval

    Mar 2, 2026Jiajie Jin, Yanzhao Zhang, Mingxin Li +4Dense RetrievalInformation Retrieval

    Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence, Renmin University of China · Tongyi Lab, Alibaba Group

  16. CURE: A Multimodal Benchmark for Clinical Understanding and Retrieval Evaluation

    Feb 28, 2026Yannian Gu, Zhongzhen Huang, Linjie Mu +3Clinical Language Model EvaluationMultimodal Model Evaluation

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · SenseTime Research, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, Shanghai, China

  17. Generative Agents Navigating Digital Libraries

    Feb 26, 2026Saber Zerhoudi, Michael GranitzerUser SimulationInformation Retrieval

    University of Passau, Passau, Germany · IT:U Austria, Linz, Austria

  18. HELIOS: Harmonizing Early Fusion, Late Fusion, and LLM Reasoning for Multi-Granular Table-Text Retrieval

    Feb 25, 2026Sungho Park, Joohyung Yun, Jongwuk Lee +1Information RetrievalHybrid Retrieval

    POSTECH, Republic of Korea · Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea

  19. Personalized Graph-Empowered Large Language Model for Proactive Information Access

    Feb 25, 2026Chia Cheng Chang, An-Zi Yen, Hen-Hsen Huang +1Persistent Memory for Language ModelsInformation Retrieval

    Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · Department of Computer Science, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan · Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan +1

  20. Retrieval Challenges in Low-Resource Public Service Information: A Case Study on Food Pantry Access

    Feb 25, 2026Touseef Hasan, Laila Cure, Souvika SarkarInformation RetrievalConversational Search

    Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, USA

  21. The Initial Exploration Problem in Knowledge Graph Exploration

    Feb 24, 2026Claire McNamara, Lucy Hederman, Declan O'SullivanKnowledge GraphsInformation Retrieval

    School of Computer Science and Statistics Trinity College Dublin Dublin Ireland

  22. Case-Aware LLM-as-a-Judge Evaluation for Enterprise-Scale RAG Systems

    Feb 23, 2026Mukul Chhabra, Luigi Medrano, Arush VermaRAG EvaluationMulti-Turn Dialogue Evaluation

    Dell Technologies, Austin, TX, USA

  23. Diagnosing LLM Reranker Behavior Under Fixed Evidence Pools

    Feb 20, 2026Baris Arat, Emre SeferLLM EvaluationLLM Reranking

    Ozyegin University Istanbul, Turkey

  24. Decomposing Retrieval Failures in RAG for Long-Document Financial Question Answering

    Feb 20, 2026Amine Kobeissi, Philippe LanglaisLong-Context RetrievalFinancial QA

    Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, Université de Montréal · RALI

  25. QueryPlot: Generating Geological Evidence Layers using Natural Language Queries for Mineral Exploration

    Feb 19, 2026Meng Ye, Xiao Lin, Georgina Lukoczki +2Information RetrievalGeospatial Reasoning

    SRI International, Princeton, NJ, USA · University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA · U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, USA

  26. Mine and Refine: Optimizing Graded Relevance in E-commerce Semantic Search Retrieval

    Feb 19, 2026Jiaqi Xi, Raghav Saboo, Luming Chen +8Semantic SearchE-Commerce Search

    DoorDash Inc. New York City, New York, USA · DoorDash Inc. Sunnyvale, California, USA · DoorDash Inc. USA +1

  27. Beyond Pipelines: A Fundamental Study on the Rise of Generative-Retrieval Architectures in Web Research

    Feb 19, 2026Amirereza Abbasi, Mohsen HooshmandInformation RetrievalGenerative Retrieval

    Department of Computer Science and Information Technology Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences Zanjan, Iran

  28. RankEvolve: Automating the Discovery of Retrieval Algorithms via LLM-Driven Evolution

    Feb 18, 2026Jinming Nian, Fangchen Li, Dae Hoon Park +1Information RetrievalAutomated Algorithm Discovery

    Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA · Independent Researcher, Bothell, WA, USA · Walmart Global Tech, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

  29. Retrieval Collapses When AI Pollutes the Web

    Feb 18, 2026Hongyeon Yu, Dongchan Kim, Young-Bum KimInformation RetrievalRAG Robustness

    NAVER Corp. Bellevue, WA, USA

  30. GaiaFlow: Semantic-Guided Diffusion Tuning for Carbon-Frugal Search

    Feb 17, 2026Rong Fu, Jia Yee Tan, Chunlei Meng +4Information RetrievalEnergy-Efficient ML

    Independent Researcher