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Jan 6

AGRAG: Advanced Graph-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation for LLMs

Graph-based retrieval-augmented generation (Graph-based RAG) has demonstrated significant potential in enhancing Large Language Models (LLMs) with structured knowledge. However, existing methods face three critical challenges: Inaccurate Graph Construction, caused by LLM hallucination; Poor Reasoning Ability, caused by failing to generate explicit reasons telling LLM why certain chunks were selected; and Inadequate Answering, which only partially answers the query due to the inadequate LLM reasoning, making their performance lag behind NaiveRAG on certain tasks. To address these issues, we propose AGRAG, an advanced graph-based retrieval-augmented generation framework. When constructing the graph, AGRAG substitutes the widely used LLM entity extraction method with a statistics-based method, avoiding hallucination and error propagation. When retrieval, AGRAG formulates the graph reasoning procedure as the Minimum Cost Maximum Influence (MCMI) subgraph generation problem, where we try to include more nodes with high influence score, but with less involving edge cost, to make the generated reasoning paths more comprehensive. We prove this problem to be NP-hard, and propose a greedy algorithm to solve it. The MCMI subgraph generated can serve as explicit reasoning paths to tell LLM why certain chunks were retrieved, thereby making the LLM better focus on the query-related part contents of the chunks, reducing the impact of noise, and improving AGRAG's reasoning ability. Furthermore, compared with the simple tree-structured reasoning paths, our MCMI subgraph can allow more complex graph structures, such as cycles, and improve the comprehensiveness of the generated reasoning paths.

  • 4 authors
·
Nov 2, 2025

Neural Graph Reasoning: Complex Logical Query Answering Meets Graph Databases

Complex logical query answering (CLQA) is a recently emerged task of graph machine learning that goes beyond simple one-hop link prediction and solves a far more complex task of multi-hop logical reasoning over massive, potentially incomplete graphs in a latent space. The task received a significant traction in the community; numerous works expanded the field along theoretical and practical axes to tackle different types of complex queries and graph modalities with efficient systems. In this paper, we provide a holistic survey of CLQA with a detailed taxonomy studying the field from multiple angles, including graph types (modality, reasoning domain, background semantics), modeling aspects (encoder, processor, decoder), supported queries (operators, patterns, projected variables), datasets, evaluation metrics, and applications. Refining the CLQA task, we introduce the concept of Neural Graph Databases (NGDBs). Extending the idea of graph databases (graph DBs), NGDB consists of a Neural Graph Storage and a Neural Graph Engine. Inside Neural Graph Storage, we design a graph store, a feature store, and further embed information in a latent embedding store using an encoder. Given a query, Neural Query Engine learns how to perform query planning and execution in order to efficiently retrieve the correct results by interacting with the Neural Graph Storage. Compared with traditional graph DBs, NGDBs allow for a flexible and unified modeling of features in diverse modalities using the embedding store. Moreover, when the graph is incomplete, they can provide robust retrieval of answers which a normal graph DB cannot recover. Finally, we point out promising directions, unsolved problems and applications of NGDB for future research.

  • 5 authors
·
Mar 26, 2023

From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization

The use of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to retrieve relevant information from an external knowledge source enables large language models (LLMs) to answer questions over private and/or previously unseen document collections. However, RAG fails on global questions directed at an entire text corpus, such as "What are the main themes in the dataset?", since this is inherently a query-focused summarization (QFS) task, rather than an explicit retrieval task. Prior QFS methods, meanwhile, fail to scale to the quantities of text indexed by typical RAG systems. To combine the strengths of these contrasting methods, we propose a Graph RAG approach to question answering over private text corpora that scales with both the generality of user questions and the quantity of source text to be indexed. Our approach uses an LLM to build a graph-based text index in two stages: first to derive an entity knowledge graph from the source documents, then to pregenerate community summaries for all groups of closely-related entities. Given a question, each community summary is used to generate a partial response, before all partial responses are again summarized in a final response to the user. For a class of global sensemaking questions over datasets in the 1 million token range, we show that Graph RAG leads to substantial improvements over a na\"ive RAG baseline for both the comprehensiveness and diversity of generated answers. An open-source, Python-based implementation of both global and local Graph RAG approaches is forthcoming at https://aka.ms/graphrag.

  • 8 authors
·
Apr 24, 2024

HM-RAG: Hierarchical Multi-Agent Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation

While Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) augments Large Language Models (LLMs) with external knowledge, conventional single-agent RAG remains fundamentally limited in resolving complex queries demanding coordinated reasoning across heterogeneous data ecosystems. We present HM-RAG, a novel Hierarchical Multi-agent Multimodal RAG framework that pioneers collaborative intelligence for dynamic knowledge synthesis across structured, unstructured, and graph-based data. The framework is composed of three-tiered architecture with specialized agents: a Decomposition Agent that dissects complex queries into contextually coherent sub-tasks via semantic-aware query rewriting and schema-guided context augmentation; Multi-source Retrieval Agents that carry out parallel, modality-specific retrieval using plug-and-play modules designed for vector, graph, and web-based databases; and a Decision Agent that uses consistency voting to integrate multi-source answers and resolve discrepancies in retrieval results through Expert Model Refinement. This architecture attains comprehensive query understanding by combining textual, graph-relational, and web-derived evidence, resulting in a remarkable 12.95% improvement in answer accuracy and a 3.56% boost in question classification accuracy over baseline RAG systems on the ScienceQA and CrisisMMD benchmarks. Notably, HM-RAG establishes state-of-the-art results in zero-shot settings on both datasets. Its modular architecture ensures seamless integration of new data modalities while maintaining strict data governance, marking a significant advancement in addressing the critical challenges of multimodal reasoning and knowledge synthesis in RAG systems. Code is available at https://github.com/ocean-luna/HMRAG.

  • 7 authors
·
Apr 13, 2025

Enhancing Transformers for Generalizable First-Order Logical Entailment

Transformers, as a fundamental deep learning architecture, have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in reasoning. This paper investigates the generalizable first-order logical reasoning ability of transformers with their parameterized knowledge and explores ways to improve it. The first-order reasoning capability of transformers is assessed through their ability to perform first-order logical entailment, which is quantitatively measured by their performance in answering knowledge graph queries. We establish connections between (1) two types of distribution shifts studied in out-of-distribution generalization and (2) the unseen knowledge and query settings discussed in the task of knowledge graph query answering, enabling a characterization of fine-grained generalizability. Results on our comprehensive dataset show that transformers outperform previous methods specifically designed for this task and provide detailed empirical evidence on the impact of input query syntax, token embedding, and transformer architectures on the reasoning capability of transformers. Interestingly, our findings reveal a mismatch between positional encoding and other design choices in transformer architectures employed in prior practices. This discovery motivates us to propose a more sophisticated, logic-aware architecture, TEGA, to enhance the capability for generalizable first-order logical entailment in transformers.

  • 8 authors
·
Jan 1, 2025

RConE: Rough Cone Embedding for Multi-Hop Logical Query Answering on Multi-Modal Knowledge Graphs

Multi-hop query answering over a Knowledge Graph (KG) involves traversing one or more hops from the start node to answer a query. Path-based and logic-based methods are state-of-the-art for multi-hop question answering. The former is used in link prediction tasks. The latter is for answering complex logical queries. The logical multi-hop querying technique embeds the KG and queries in the same embedding space. The existing work incorporates First Order Logic (FOL) operators, such as conjunction (wedge), disjunction (vee), and negation (neg), in queries. Though current models have most of the building blocks to execute the FOL queries, they cannot use the dense information of multi-modal entities in the case of Multi-Modal Knowledge Graphs (MMKGs). We propose RConE, an embedding method to capture the multi-modal information needed to answer a query. The model first shortlists candidate (multi-modal) entities containing the answer. It then finds the solution (sub-entities) within those entities. Several existing works tackle path-based question-answering in MMKGs. However, to our knowledge, we are the first to introduce logical constructs in querying MMKGs and to answer queries that involve sub-entities of multi-modal entities as the answer. Extensive evaluation of four publicly available MMKGs indicates that RConE outperforms the current state-of-the-art.

  • 3 authors
·
Aug 21, 2024

Pathformer: Recursive Path Query Encoding for Complex Logical Query Answering

Complex Logical Query Answering (CLQA) over incomplete knowledge graphs is a challenging task. Recently, Query Embedding (QE) methods are proposed to solve CLQA by performing multi-hop logical reasoning. However, most of them only consider historical query context information while ignoring future information, which leads to their failure to capture the complex dependencies behind the elements of a query. In recent years, the transformer architecture has shown a strong ability to model long-range dependencies between words. The bidirectional attention mechanism proposed by the transformer can solve the limitation of these QE methods regarding query context. Still, as a sequence model, it is difficult for the transformer to model complex logical queries with branch structure computation graphs directly. To this end, we propose a neural one-point embedding method called Pathformer based on the tree-like computation graph, i.e., query computation tree. Specifically, Pathformer decomposes the query computation tree into path query sequences by branches and then uses the transformer encoder to recursively encode these path query sequences to obtain the final query embedding. This allows Pathformer to fully utilize future context information to explicitly model the complex interactions between various parts of the path query. Experimental results show that Pathformer outperforms existing competitive neural QE methods, and we found that Pathformer has the potential to be applied to non-one-point embedding space.

  • 6 authors
·
Jun 21, 2024

AGENTiGraph: An Interactive Knowledge Graph Platform for LLM-based Chatbots Utilizing Private Data

Large Language Models~(LLMs) have demonstrated capabilities across various applications but face challenges such as hallucination, limited reasoning abilities, and factual inconsistencies, especially when tackling complex, domain-specific tasks like question answering~(QA). While Knowledge Graphs~(KGs) have been shown to help mitigate these issues, research on the integration of LLMs with background KGs remains limited. In particular, user accessibility and the flexibility of the underlying KG have not been thoroughly explored. We introduce AGENTiGraph (Adaptive Generative ENgine for Task-based Interaction and Graphical Representation), a platform for knowledge management through natural language interaction. It integrates knowledge extraction, integration, and real-time visualization. AGENTiGraph employs a multi-agent architecture to dynamically interpret user intents, manage tasks, and integrate new knowledge, ensuring adaptability to evolving user requirements and data contexts. Our approach demonstrates superior performance in knowledge graph interactions, particularly for complex domain-specific tasks. Experimental results on a dataset of 3,500 test cases show AGENTiGraph significantly outperforms state-of-the-art zero-shot baselines, achieving 95.12\% accuracy in task classification and 90.45\% success rate in task execution. User studies corroborate its effectiveness in real-world scenarios. To showcase versatility, we extended AGENTiGraph to legislation and healthcare domains, constructing specialized KGs capable of answering complex queries in legal and medical contexts.

  • 13 authors
·
Oct 15, 2024

Clue-RAG: Towards Accurate and Cost-Efficient Graph-based RAG via Multi-Partite Graph and Query-Driven Iterative Retrieval

Despite the remarkable progress of Large Language Models (LLMs), their performance in question answering (QA) remains limited by the lack of domain-specific and up-to-date knowledge. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) addresses this limitation by incorporating external information, often from graph-structured data. However, existing graph-based RAG methods suffer from poor graph quality due to incomplete extraction and insufficient utilization of query information during retrieval. To overcome these limitations, we propose Clue-RAG, a novel approach that introduces (1) a multi-partite graph index incorporates Chunk, knowledge unit, and entity to capture semantic content at multiple levels of granularity, coupled with a hybrid extraction strategy that reduces LLM token usage while still producing accurate and disambiguated knowledge units, and (2) Q-Iter, a query-driven iterative retrieval strategy that enhances relevance through semantic search and constrained graph traversal. Experiments on three QA benchmarks show that Clue-RAG significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, achieving up to 99.33% higher Accuracy and 113.51% higher F1 score while reducing indexing costs by 72.58%. Remarkably, Clue-RAG matches or outperforms baselines even without using an LLM for indexing. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of Clue-RAG in advancing graph-based RAG systems.

  • 5 authors
·
Jul 11, 2025

Would You Ask it that Way? Measuring and Improving Question Naturalness for Knowledge Graph Question Answering

Knowledge graph question answering (KGQA) facilitates information access by leveraging structured data without requiring formal query language expertise from the user. Instead, users can express their information needs by simply asking their questions in natural language (NL). Datasets used to train KGQA models that would provide such a service are expensive to construct, both in terms of expert and crowdsourced labor. Typically, crowdsourced labor is used to improve template-based pseudo-natural questions generated from formal queries. However, the resulting datasets often fall short of representing genuinely natural and fluent language. In the present work, we investigate ways to characterize and remedy these shortcomings. We create the IQN-KGQA test collection by sampling questions from existing KGQA datasets and evaluating them with regards to five different aspects of naturalness. Then, the questions are rewritten to improve their fluency. Finally, the performance of existing KGQA models is compared on the original and rewritten versions of the NL questions. We find that some KGQA systems fare worse when presented with more realistic formulations of NL questions. The IQN-KGQA test collection is a resource to help evaluate KGQA systems in a more realistic setting. The construction of this test collection also sheds light on the challenges of constructing large-scale KGQA datasets with genuinely NL questions.

  • 2 authors
·
May 25, 2022

UniOQA: A Unified Framework for Knowledge Graph Question Answering with Large Language Models

OwnThink stands as the most extensive Chinese open-domain knowledge graph introduced in recent times. Despite prior attempts in question answering over OwnThink (OQA), existing studies have faced limitations in model representation capabilities, posing challenges in further enhancing overall accuracy in question answering. In this paper, we introduce UniOQA, a unified framework that integrates two complementary parallel workflows. Unlike conventional approaches, UniOQA harnesses large language models (LLMs) for precise question answering and incorporates a direct-answer-prediction process as a cost-effective complement. Initially, to bolster representation capacity, we fine-tune an LLM to translate questions into the Cypher query language (CQL), tackling issues associated with restricted semantic understanding and hallucinations. Subsequently, we introduce the Entity and Relation Replacement algorithm to ensure the executability of the generated CQL. Concurrently, to augment overall accuracy in question answering, we further adapt the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) process to the knowledge graph. Ultimately, we optimize answer accuracy through a dynamic decision algorithm. Experimental findings illustrate that UniOQA notably advances SpCQL Logical Accuracy to 21.2% and Execution Accuracy to 54.9%, achieving the new state-of-the-art results on this benchmark. Through ablation experiments, we delve into the superior representation capacity of UniOQA and quantify its performance breakthrough.

  • 5 authors
·
Jun 4, 2024

NodeRAG: Structuring Graph-based RAG with Heterogeneous Nodes

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) empowers large language models to access external and private corpus, enabling factually consistent responses in specific domains. By exploiting the inherent structure of the corpus, graph-based RAG methods further enrich this process by building a knowledge graph index and leveraging the structural nature of graphs. However, current graph-based RAG approaches seldom prioritize the design of graph structures. Inadequately designed graph not only impede the seamless integration of diverse graph algorithms but also result in workflow inconsistencies and degraded performance. To further unleash the potential of graph for RAG, we propose NodeRAG, a graph-centric framework introducing heterogeneous graph structures that enable the seamless and holistic integration of graph-based methodologies into the RAG workflow. By aligning closely with the capabilities of LLMs, this framework ensures a fully cohesive and efficient end-to-end process. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that NodeRAG exhibits performance advantages over previous methods, including GraphRAG and LightRAG, not only in indexing time, query time, and storage efficiency but also in delivering superior question-answering performance on multi-hop benchmarks and open-ended head-to-head evaluations with minimal retrieval tokens. Our GitHub repository could be seen at https://github.com/Terry-Xu-666/NodeRAG.

  • 7 authors
·
Apr 15, 2025 2

Think-on-Graph 3.0: Efficient and Adaptive LLM Reasoning on Heterogeneous Graphs via Multi-Agent Dual-Evolving Context Retrieval

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Graph-based RAG has become the important paradigm for enhancing Large Language Models (LLMs) with external knowledge. However, existing approaches face a fundamental trade-off. While graph-based methods are inherently dependent on high-quality graph structures, they face significant practical constraints: manually constructed knowledge graphs are prohibitively expensive to scale, while automatically extracted graphs from corpora are limited by the performance of the underlying LLM extractors, especially when using smaller, local-deployed models. This paper presents Think-on-Graph 3.0 (ToG-3), a novel framework that introduces Multi-Agent Context Evolution and Retrieval (MACER) mechanism to overcome these limitations. Our core innovation is the dynamic construction and refinement of a Chunk-Triplets-Community heterogeneous graph index, which pioneeringly incorporates a dual-evolution mechanism of Evolving Query and Evolving Sub-Graph for precise evidence retrieval. This approach addresses a critical limitation of prior Graph-based RAG methods, which typically construct a static graph index in a single pass without adapting to the actual query. A multi-agent system, comprising Constructor, Retriever, Reflector, and Responser agents, collaboratively engages in an iterative process of evidence retrieval, answer generation, sufficiency reflection, and, crucially, evolving query and subgraph. This dual-evolving multi-agent system allows ToG-3 to adaptively build a targeted graph index during reasoning, mitigating the inherent drawbacks of static, one-time graph construction and enabling deep, precise reasoning even with lightweight LLMs. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ToG-3 outperforms compared baselines on both deep and broad reasoning benchmarks, and ablation studies confirm the efficacy of the components of MACER framework.

DataArcTech DataArcTech Ltd.
·
Sep 25, 2025 3

Adapting Neural Link Predictors for Data-Efficient Complex Query Answering

Answering complex queries on incomplete knowledge graphs is a challenging task where a model needs to answer complex logical queries in the presence of missing knowledge. Prior work in the literature has proposed to address this problem by designing architectures trained end-to-end for the complex query answering task with a reasoning process that is hard to interpret while requiring data and resource-intensive training. Other lines of research have proposed re-using simple neural link predictors to answer complex queries, reducing the amount of training data by orders of magnitude while providing interpretable answers. The neural link predictor used in such approaches is not explicitly optimised for the complex query answering task, implying that its scores are not calibrated to interact together. We propose to address these problems via CQD^{A}, a parameter-efficient score adaptation model optimised to re-calibrate neural link prediction scores for the complex query answering task. While the neural link predictor is frozen, the adaptation component -- which only increases the number of model parameters by 0.03% -- is trained on the downstream complex query answering task. Furthermore, the calibration component enables us to support reasoning over queries that include atomic negations, which was previously impossible with link predictors. In our experiments, CQD^{A} produces significantly more accurate results than current state-of-the-art methods, improving from 34.4 to 35.1 Mean Reciprocal Rank values averaged across all datasets and query types while using leq 30% of the available training query types. We further show that CQD^{A} is data-efficient, achieving competitive results with only 1% of the training complex queries, and robust in out-of-domain evaluations.

  • 5 authors
·
Jan 28, 2023