Semantic Textual Similarity

Also known as STS

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Overview

Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) studies how much meaning two pieces of text share, supporting tasks such as paraphrase detection, semantic search, and evaluating generated text. Common approaches compare sentence embeddings with cosine or rank-based metrics, fine-tune encoders with contrastive or similarity-regression objectives, or use natural language inference models and large language models to judge pairs. Evaluation uses human-rated similarity sets alongside paraphrase, retrieval, multilingual, and domain-specific benchmarks. A central challenge is that high similarity can hide important distinctions such as contradictions or changes in legal force, while scores also vary with model geometry, context, language, and domain.

Latest papers

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44 papers4 papers in the last four weeks, down 33% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Matching Meaning at Scale: Evaluating Semantic Search for 18th-Century Intellectual History through the Case of Locke

    May 10, 2026Yu Wu, Ananth Mahadevan, Filip Ginter +2Historical Document AnalysisSemantic Textual Similarity

    University of Helsinki · 2TurkuNLP, University of Turku · 3ELLIS Institute Finland

  2. Is Textual Similarity Invariant under Machine Translation? Evidence Based on the Political Manifesto Corpus

    May 1, 2026Daria Boratyn, Damian Brzyski, Albert Leśniak +5Semantic Textual SimilarityText Embedding Evaluation

    aJagiellonian Center for Quantitative Political Science, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland · bAGH University, Kraków, Poland · cJagiellonian Center for Digital Humanities, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

  3. SemEval-2026 Task 4: Narrative Story Similarity and Narrative Representation Learning

    Apr 23, 2026Hans Ole Hatzel, Ekaterina Artemova, Haimo Paul Stiemer +2Semantic Textual SimilarityRepresentation Learning

    University of Hamburg1 · Toloka AI2 · German UDS3 +1

  4. Semantic Needles in Document Haystacks: Sensitivity Testing of LLM-as-a-Judge Similarity Scoring

    Apr 20, 2026Sinan G. Aksoy, Alexandra A. Sabrio, Erik VonKaenel +1Semantic Textual SimilarityLLM-as-a-Judge

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory · Washington University in St. Louis · Humana Inc.

  5. SemLink: A Semantic-Aware Automated Test Oracle for Hyperlink Verification using Siamese Sentence-BERT

    Apr 7, 2026Guan-Yan Yang, Wei-Ling Wen, Shu-Yuan Ku +2Semantic Change DetectionSemantic Textual Similarity

    National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan · National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan

  6. Multiperspectivity as a Resource for Narrative Similarity Prediction

    Mar 23, 2026Max Upravitelev, Veronika Solopova, Jing Yang +4Semantic Textual Similarity

    Technische Universit`‘at Berlin · German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) · BIFOLD – Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data +1

  7. Explainable Semantic Textual Similarity via Dissimilar Span Detection

    Mar 22, 2026Diego Miguel Lozano, Daryna Dementieva, Alexander FraserSemantic Textual Similarity

    School of Computation, Information and Technology Technical University of Munich · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML)

  8. Operationalising Cyber Risk Management Using AI: Connecting Cyber Incidents to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques, Security Controls, and Metrics

    Mar 12, 2026Emad Sherif, Iryna Yevseyeva, Vitor Basto-Fernandes +1CybersecurityCyber Threat Intelligence

    Faculty of Technology, Arts and Culture, De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom · Instituto Universitário De Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), University Institute of Lisbon, ISTAR-IUL, Lisboa, Portugal · Sorbonne Université, CNRS, LIP6, 75005 Paris, France

  9. Disentangling Similarity and Relatedness in Topic Models

    Mar 11, 2026Hanlin Xiao, Yang Wang, Mauricio A. Álvarez +1Topic ModelingSemantic Textual Similarity

    Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, The University of Manchester, UK · Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, UK · Department of Chemistry, The University of Manchester, UK

  10. Fusing Semantic, Lexical, and Domain Perspectives for Recipe Similarity Estimation

    Mar 10, 2026Denica Kjorvezir, Danilo Najkov, Eva Valencič +4Semantic Textual Similarity

    Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia · S.Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, N. Macedonia · Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

  11. LIDS: LLM Summary Inference Under the Layered Lens

    Feb 18, 2026Dylan Park, Yingying Fan, Jinchi LvSummarization EvaluationLLM Evaluation

    Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 · Data Sciences and Operations Department, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089

  12. Loci Similes: A Benchmark for Extracting Intertextualities in Latin Literature

    Jan 12, 2026Julian Schelb, Michael Wittweiler, Marie Revellio +2Semantic Textual Similarity

    Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz · Institute of Archaology, Classical Philology and Ancient Studies, University of Zurich · Department of Latin Philology, University of Konstanz

  13. NMIXX: Domain-Adapted Neural Embeddings for Cross-Lingual eXploration of Finance

    Jul 13, 2025Hanwool Lee, Sara Yu, Yewon Hwang +4Multilingual Language ModelsText Embeddings

    FinancialNLPLab, MODULABS Shinhan Securities Seoul, Republic of Korea · FinancialNLPLab, MODULABS KT Seoul, Republic of Korea · FinancialNLPLab, MODULABS EMRO Seoul, Republic of Korea +4

  14. EquivPruner: Boosting Efficiency and Quality in LLM-Based Search via Action Pruning

    May 22, 2025Jiawei Liu, Qisi Chen, Jianshu Zhang +2LLM Inference EfficiencySemantic Textual Similarity

    School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China · Department of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong · iFLYTEK Research