Papers by Lian Liu

42 papers
What Makes a Good Reasoning Chain? Uncovering Structural Patterns in Long Chain-of-Thought Reasoning (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Recent advances in reasoning with large language models have popularized Long Chain-of-Thought (LCoT) a framework that converts sequential LCoTs into hierarchical tree structures enables deeper structural analysis of LLM reasoning.
Approach: They propose a framework that converts sequential LCoTs into hierarchical tree structures and enables deeper structural analysis of LLM reasoning.
Outcome: The proposed framework can be used to analyze LLM reasoning in a variety of tasks and models.
MDSEval: A Meta-Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Dialogue Summarization (2025.findings-emnlp)

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Challenge: Multimodal Dialogue Summarization (MDS) is a critical task with wide-ranging applications.
Approach: They propose a meta-evaluation benchmark for multimodal dialogue summarization based on image-sharing dialogues, corresponding summaries and human judgments .
Outcome: The proposed framework is the first to identify and formalize key evaluation dimensions specific to MDS.
Sequential LLM Framework for Fashion Recommendation (2024.emnlp-industry)

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Challenge: Existing fashion recommendation systems struggle with the unique challenges of the fashion domain.
Approach: They propose a sequential fashion recommendation framework that leverages a pre-trained large language model enhanced with recommendation-specific prompts.
Outcome: The proposed framework significantly improves fashion recommendation performance on Amazon fashion.
CommonIT: Commonality-Aware Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models via Data Partitions (2024.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Current studies have focused on fine-tuning, but the use of instruction tuning is not as effective as fine-cuning.
Approach: They propose a commonality-aware instruction tuning strategy to cluster instruction datasets into distinct groups with three proposed metrics Task, Embedding and Length.
Outcome: The proposed strategy boosts an average improvement of 2.1% on the general domain and 5.2% on the special domain.
LiveCANNBench: Benchmark SWE AI Coding for Ascend CANN (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Recent advances in agents have enabled multi-file, multi-language, and dependency-aware AI coding.
Approach: They propose an SWE-level benchmark for AI coding in the Huawei Ascend CANN software stack.
Outcome: The proposed benchmark is constructed from real-world CANN repositories and consists of over 400 task instances spanning multiple file, multi-language, and execution-aware coding challenges.
HiPrune: Hierarchical Attention for Efficient Token Pruning in Vision-Language Models (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing methods for visual token pruning lack insight into the intrinsic property of the vision encoder . et al., 2017: 99.3% of task accuracy with only 1/3 of the tokens.
Approach: They propose a model-agnostic token pruning method that trains without training . they propose 'HiPrune' method which prunes visual tokens according to their attention .
Outcome: The proposed method achieves 99.3% of task accuracy with only 1/3 of the tokens . it reduces inference FLOPs by 58.7% and maintains 99.99% accuracy with 2/9 tokens.
JointCoder: Exploring Automated ICD Coding on Real-World Chinese EHRs with a Multi-Agent Framework (2026.acl-demo)

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Challenge: Existing automated ICD coding systems face several fundamental challenges due to the limited availability of publicly available Chinese ICD datasets.
Approach: They propose to use a Chinese ICD coding dataset and a multi-agent framework to reformulate ICD as a joint disease-procedure coding task.
Outcome: The proposed system outperforms state-of-the-art methods on real-world Chinese ICD coding datasets and 1.7B-parameter models.
RLKGF: Reinforcement Learning from Knowledge Graph Feedback Without Human Annotations (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Lack of human preference labels remains a significant bottleneck when applying RLHF to a downstream domain.
Approach: They propose a method that leverages human priors encoded in Knowledge Graphs (KGs) to derive RL rewards in the absence of manual annotations.
Outcome: Experiments on three public and one private medical dialogue datasets show that the proposed method outperforms the competitive RLAIF in improving LLM diagnostic accuracy.
Listen, Watch, and Learn to Feel: Retrieval-Augmented Emotion Reasoning for Compound Emotion Generation (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing methods to assess human emotion are limited by the subjective nature of emotion perception, limiting the robustness of existing models.
Approach: They propose a plug-and-play module that enhances MLLMs’ ability to tackle compound and context-rich emotion tasks.
Outcome: The proposed framework improves MLLMs' ability to tackle compound and context-rich emotion tasks and the Compound Emotion QA dataset shows it performs well across both benchmarks and evaluation frameworks.
Curriculum Consistency Learning for Conditional Sentence Generation (2024.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Consistency learning (CL) has proven to be a valuable technique for improving the robustness of conditional sentence generation models.
Approach: They propose a strategy that guides models to learn consistency in alignment with their current capacity to differentiate between features.
Outcome: The proposed strategy delivers +2.0 accuracy point improvement compared with vanilla IT and +0.7 COMET scores over traditional CL methods in MT tasks.
M3-Embedding: Multi-Linguality, Multi-Functionality, Multi-Granularity Text Embeddings Through Self-Knowledge Distillation (2024.findings-acl)

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Challenge: In this paper, we introduce a new embedding model for semantic retrieval of more than 100 working languages.
Approach: They propose a new embedding model that supports multi-lingual, cross-lingual and long-document retrieval . they propose integrating relevance scores from different retrieval functionalities into the teacher signal .
Outcome: The proposed model exhibits superior performance on multilingual, cross-lingual, and long-document retrieval benchmarks.
Mixture of Heterogeneous Grouped Experts for Language Modeling (2026.acl-industry)

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Challenge: Large Language Models (LLMs) based on Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) enforce uniform expert sizes, creating a rigidity that fails to align computational costs with varying token-level complexity.
Approach: They propose a mixture of heterogeneous grouped experts (MoHGE) that allows for flexible, resource-aware expert combinations.
Outcome: The proposed model matches the performance of existing Mixture-of-Experts architectures while maintaining balanced GPU utilization.
MegaPairs: Massive Data Synthesis for Universal Multimodal Retrieval (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: despite the growing demand for multimodal retrieval, there is a lack of training data.
Approach: They propose a data synthesis method that leverages vision language models and open-domain images to generate high-quality data.
Outcome: The proposed method outperforms baseline models on 70 more datasets and can scale up.
ReasonEmbed: Enhanced Text Embeddings for Reasoning-Intensive Document Retrieval (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Recent studies suggest that traditional retrievers struggle with reasoningintensive tasks such as personal assistants and scientific research.
Approach: They propose a new data synthesis method that overcomes the triviality problem prevalent in previous synthetic datasets and propose 'ReMixer', a data fusion method that generates 82K high-quality training samples.
Outcome: The proposed model outperforms existing models on reasoning-intensive retrieval tasks.
Matching-oriented Embedding Quantization For Ad-hoc Retrieval (2021.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Product quantization (PQ) is a widely used technique for ad-hoc retrieval.
Approach: They propose a match-oriented product quantization with a multinoulli contrastive loss objective.
Outcome: The proposed method maximizes matching probability of query and ground-truth key, compared with previous methods on non-supervised datasets.
KCS: Diversify Multi-hop Question Generation with Knowledge Composition Sampling (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to multi-hop question answering focus on generating simple questions and neglecting the integration of essential knowledge, such as relevant sentences within documents.
Approach: They propose a framework to expand the diversity of generated multi-hop questions by sampling varied knowledge compositions within a given context.
Outcome: The proposed framework improves the overall accuracy of knowledge composition selection by 3.9% on hotpotQA and 2WikiMultihopQA datasets.
APT: Improving Specialist LLM Performance with Weakness Case Acquisition and Iterative Preference Training (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Large Language Models often require domain-specific fine-tuning to address targeted tasks, which risks degrading their general capabilities.
Approach: They propose to use self-generated dis-preferred weakness data to enhance model performance with a targeted training approach that minimizes interference with existing knowledge base.
Outcome: The proposed approach ensures no reduction in generic capacity and achieves superior performance on downstream tasks compared to existing methods.
Investigating Data Variance in Evaluations of Automatic Machine Translation Metrics (2022.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Current evaluation methods focus on one dataset, e.g., Newstest dataset in each year’s WMT Metrics Shared Task.
Approach: They propose to use a single dataset to evaluate the performance of automatic translation metrics.
Outcome: The results show that the rankings of metrics vary when the evaluation is conducted on different datasets.
Let Retrievers Think Before Action: Thought-Augmented Embedding for Dense Retrieval (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Large language models have demonstrated that explicit step-by-step thinking can substantially improve performance on complex tasks.
Approach: They propose a model that generates preliminary thoughts for input queries before document retrieval.
Outcome: The proposed model generates preliminary thoughts for input queries before document retrieval.
Llama2Vec: Unsupervised Adaptation of Large Language Models for Dense Retrieval (2024.acl-long)

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Challenge: Dense retrieval requires discriminative embeddings to represent the semantic relationship between query and document.
Approach: They propose an unsupervised approach that performs unsupervised adaptation of large language models for dense retrieval.
Outcome: The proposed model improves on a variety of dense retrieval benchmarks and is available on github.
Visualizing the Relationship Between Encoded Linguistic Information and Task Performance (2022.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Recent studies show that encoding more syntactic information does not lead to better performance.
Approach: They propose a method to optimize pareto-optimal models by formalizing it as a multi-objective optimization problem.
Outcome: The proposed method is better than a baseline method on two NLP tasks.
SeaPO: Strategic Error Amplification for Robust Preference Optimization of Large Language Models (2025.findings-emnlp)

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Challenge: Existing methods for preference optimization of large language models use pairs of positive and negative samples, but the quality of positive samples may become similar during training, complicating preference learning.
Approach: SeaPO introduces error types commonly occurring in large language models to improve preference learning.
Outcome: SeaPO introduces error types into model Preference Optimization to improve model performance . negative samples are more erroneous than positive samples, and preference-based training mitigates errors .
Assessing Dialogue Systems with Distribution Distances (2021.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing evaluation metrics focus on turnlevel quality, which is not well suited for open-end dialogue tasks.
Approach: They propose to measure the performance of a dialogue system by computing the distributionwise distance between its generated conversations and real-world conversations.
Outcome: The proposed metrics correlate better with human judgments than existing metrics on dialogue systems.
AIR-Bench: Automated Heterogeneous Information Retrieval Benchmark (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Evaluation benchmarks based on predefined domains and human-labeled data face limitations in addressing evaluation needs for emerging domains.
Approach: They propose an automated information retrieval benchmark based on predefined domains and human-labeled data . AIR-Bench is automated and Heterogeneous with three key features .
Outcome: The proposed benchmarks are based on predefined domains and human-labeled data.
SWE-AGILE: A Software Agent Framework for Efficiently Managing Dynamic Reasoning Context (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: representative ReAct-style approaches lack explicit System-2 reasoning for deep analysis and handling complex edge cases.
Approach: They propose a software agent framework that preserves full reasoning history while compressing historical reasoning content into concise Reasoning Digests.
Outcome: Empirically, the proposed framework sets a new standard for 7B-8B models on SWE-Bench-Verified using only 2.2k trajectories and 896 tasks.
Boosting Long-Context Information Seeking via Query-Guided Activation Refilling (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing methods for processing long contexts are ineffective due to their inherent context window limitations and the computational burden of extensive key-value activations.
Approach: They propose a method for processing long context information-seeking tasks via query-guided ACtivation REfilling (ACRE) a bi-layer KV Cache is constructed where the layer-1 cache compactly captures global information and the layer-2 cache provides detailed, localized information.
Outcome: The proposed method achieves significant improvements in both performance and efficiency on a variety of long-context information-seeking datasets.
RAPID: Efficient Retrieval-Augmented Long Text Generation with Writing Planning and Information Discovery (2025.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing methods for knowledge-intensive long texts struggle with issues like hallucinations, topic incoherence, and significant latency.
Approach: They propose a retrieval-augmented long text generation framework with writing P**lanning and I**nformation to address these challenges.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods on a freshWiki-2024 dataset.
Reinforced IR: A Self-Boosting Framework For Domain-Adapted Information Retrieval (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing retrieval methods struggle with highly specialized situations that require extensive domain expertise.
Approach: They propose a method that integrates additional information from an LLM-based generator to enhance query performance and train the retriever to better discriminate the relevant documents identified by the generator.
Outcome: The proposed method outperforms existing domain adaptation methods by a large margin and leads to substantial improvements in retrieval quality across a wide range of application scenarios.
Verifiable LLM-Generated Text Detection via Projected Semantic-Structural Distributions (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing methods for detecting LLM-Generated text suffer from distribution misalignment and limited interpretability.
Approach: They propose a statistical framework utilizing supervised subspace learning to extract compact features and construct conditional semantic distributions based on syntactic structures.
Outcome: The proposed framework is superior in cross-domain, cross-model, and adversarial scenarios.
Generating Attribution Reports for Manipulated Facial Images: A Dataset and Baseline (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing facial forgery detection methods focus on binary classification or pixel-level localization, providing little semantic insight into the nature of the manipulation.
Approach: They propose a multimodal task that localizes forged regions and generates natural language explanations grounded in editing process.
Outcome: The proposed task localizes forged regions and generates natural language explanations grounded in editing process.
PersonaAgent: Bridging Memory and Action for Personalized LLM Agents (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Existing Large Language Model (LLM) enabled agents lack flexibility to respond to users’ varying needs and preferences.
Approach: They propose a test-time user-preference alignment strategy that optimizes the persona prompt, ensuring real-time preference alignment through textual loss feedback between simulated and ground-truth responses.
Outcome: The proposed framework outperforms baseline methods in real-time and in real applications.
DAST: Difficulty-Adaptive Slow-Thinking for Large Reasoning Models (2025.emnlp-industry)

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Challenge: Recent advances in slow-thinking reasoning models have shown exceptional performance in complex reasoning tasks.
Approach: They propose a framework that enables models to automatically adjust Chain-of-Thought (CoT) length based on problem difficulty.
Outcome: The proposed framework penalizes inefficiency on simple problems while incentivizing deep reasoning for complex ones.
MR-ALIGN: Meta-Reasoning Informed Factuality Alignment for Large Reasoning Models (2026.findings-acl)

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Challenge: Large reasoning models (LRMs) show strong capabilities in complex reasoning, yet their marginal gains on evidence-dependent factual questions are limited.
Approach: They propose a Meta-Reasoning informed alignment framework that quantifies state-transition probabilities along the model’s thinking process and constructs a transition-aware implicit reward that reinforces beneficial reasoning patterns while suppressing defective ones at the atomic thinking segments.
Outcome: Empirical evaluations of four factual QA datasets and one long-form factuality benchmark show that MR-ALIGN consistently improves accuracy and truthfulness while reducing misleading reasoning.
IPL: Leveraging Multimodal Large Language Models for Intelligent Product Listing (2024.emnlp-industry)

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Challenge: Unlike professional Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce platforms, consumer-to consumer (C2C), is mainly targeting individual sellers.
Approach: They develop an intelligent product listing tool that generates product descriptions using various product attributes such as category, brand, color, condition, etc.
Outcome: The proposed tool outperforms the base model in domain-specific tasks while producing less hallucination.
AceGPT, Localizing Large Language Models in Arabic (2024.naacl-long)

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Challenge: Significant concerns emerge when addressing cultural sensitivity and local values.
Approach: They propose a localized Large Language Model (LLM) specifically for Arabic, a language imbued with unique cultural characteristics inadequately addressed by current mainstream models.
Outcome: The proposed model sets the state-of-the-art standard for open Arabic LLMs across various benchmarks.
Towards Better Entity Linking with Multi-View Enhanced Distillation (2023.acl-long)

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Challenge: Entity linking is a fundamental task in Natural Language Processing (NLP), connecting mentions within unstructured contexts to their corresponding entities in a Knowledge Base (KB).
Approach: They propose a dual-encoder framework that can efficiently match mentions to two-encoding frameworks by a global-view.
Outcome: The proposed framework achieves state-of-the-art on several entity linking benchmarks.
MIND: A Large-scale Dataset for News Recommendation (2020.acl-main)

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Challenge: Personalized news recommendation is an important technique for personalized news service.
Approach: They propose to build a large-scale news recommendation dataset from Microsoft News . they demonstrate that news recommendation relies on the quality of news content understanding .
Outcome: The proposed dataset contains 1 million users and more than 160k English news articles, each of which has rich textual content such as title, abstract and body.
EquivPruner: Boosting Efficiency and Quality in LLM-Based Search via Action Pruning (2026.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing semantic similarity methods struggle to accurately identify semantically equivalent steps in domain-specific contexts like mathematical reasoning.
Approach: They propose a simple yet effective approach that identifies and prunes semantically equivalent actions during LLM reasoning search.
Outcome: The proposed approach reduces token consumption while improving reasoning efficiency and accuracy on Qwen2.5-Math-7B-Instruct on GSM8K.
Enhancing One-Shot Pruned Pre-trained Language Models through Sparse-Dense-Sparse Mechanism (2025.coling-main)

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Challenge: Pre-trained language models (PLMs) are robust in contextual understanding but their considerable size incurs significant computational and storage costs.
Approach: They propose a Sparse-Dense-Sparse pruning framework to prune PLMs . they prune less critical connections using conventional pruning methods .
Outcome: The proposed pruning framework outperforms SparseGPT and Wanda under identical sparsity.
Any Information Is Just Worth One Single Screenshot: Unifying Search With Visualized Information Retrieval (2025.acl-long)

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Challenge: Existing multimodal retrieval models are lacking in visual representations of multimodal data.
Approach: They propose a visualized information retrieval paradigm where multimodal information is represented by a unified visual format called Screenshots for various retrieval applications.
Outcome: The proposed model is based on a large dataset of screenshots from diverse sources . it is compared with existing models and lays a solid foundation for the new model .
AMOA: Global Acoustic Feature Enhanced Modal-Order-Aware Network for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis (2022.coling-1)

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Challenge: Existing methods treat three modal features equally, without distinguishing the importance of different modalities. Existing models split the video into frames, leading to missing the global acoustic information.
Approach: They propose a global Acoustic feature enhanced Modal-Order-Aware network to address these problems.
Outcome: The proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art models on two public datasets.
Fuzzy Reasoning Chain (FRC): An Innovative Reasoning Framework from Fuzziness to Clarity (2025.findings-emnlp)

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Challenge: ambiguity, polysemy, or uncertainty remain significant challenges in natural language processing.
Approach: They introduce a framework that integrates LLM semantic priors with continuous fuzzy membership degrees to create an explicit interaction between probability-based reasoning and fuzzy membership reasoning.
Outcome: The proposed framework integrates semantic priors with continuous fuzzy membership degrees . it allows ambiguous inputs to be gradually transformed into clear and interpretable decisions .

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