LIT-RAGBench: Benchmarking Generator Capabilities of Large Language Models in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Koki Itai, Shunichi Hasegawa, Yuta Yamamoto, Gouki Minegishi, Masaki Otsuki


Abstract
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a framework in which a Generator, such as a Large Language Model (LLM), produces answers by retrieving documents from an external collection using a Retriever. In practice, Generators must integrate evidence from long contexts, perform multi-step reasoning, interpret tables, and abstain when evidence is missing. However, existing benchmarks for Generators provide limited coverage, with none enabling simultaneous evaluation of multiple capabilities under unified conditions. To bridge the gap between existing evaluations and practical use, we introduce LIT-RAGBench (the Logic, Integration, Table, Reasoning, and Abstention RAG Generator Benchmark), which defines five categories: Integration, Reasoning, Logic, Table, and Abstention—each further divided into practical evaluation aspects. LIT-RAGBench systematically covers patterns combining multiple aspects across categories. By using fictional entities and scenarios, LIT-RAGBench evaluates answers grounded in the provided external documents. The dataset consists of 114 human-constructed Japanese questions and an English version generated by machine translation with human curation. We use LLM-as-a-Judge for scoring and report category-wise and overall accuracy. Across API-based and open-weight models, no model exceeds 90% overall accuracy. By making strengths and weaknesses measurable within each category, LIT-RAGBench serves as a valuable metric for model selection in practical RAG deployments and for building RAG-specialized models.
Anthology ID:
2026.lrec-main.427
Volume:
Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Editors:
Stelios Piperidis, Núria Bel, Henk van den Heuvel, Nancy Ide, Simon Krek, Antonio Toral
Venue:
LREC
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Publisher:
ELRA Language Resource Association
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Pages:
5482–5493
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-lrec/2026.lrec-main.427/
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Cite (ACL):
Koki Itai, Shunichi Hasegawa, Yuta Yamamoto, Gouki Minegishi, and Masaki Otsuki. 2026. LIT-RAGBench: Benchmarking Generator Capabilities of Large Language Models in Retrieval-Augmented Generation. International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, main:5482–5493.
Cite (Informal):
LIT-RAGBench: Benchmarking Generator Capabilities of Large Language Models in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (Itai et al., LREC 2026)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-lrec/2026.lrec-main.427.pdf