RARE: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models
Hieu Tran, Zonghai Yao, Zhichao Yang, Junda Wang, Yifan Zhang, Shuo Han, Feiyun Ouyang, Hong Yu
Abstract
This work introduces RARE (Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement), a versatile extension to the mutual reasoning framework (rStar), aimed at enhancing reasoning accuracy and factual integrity across large language models (LLMs) for complex, knowledge-intensive tasks such as medical and commonsense reasoning. RARE incorporates two innovative actions within the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) framework: (A6), which generates search queries based on the initial problem statement, performs information retrieval using those queries, and augments reasoning with the retrieved data to formulate the final answer; and (A7), which leverages information retrieval specifically for generated sub-questions and re-answers these sub-questions with the relevant contextual information. Additionally, a Retrieval-Augmented Factuality Scorer is proposed to replace the original discriminator, prioritizing reasoning paths that meet high standards of factuality. Experimental results with LLaMA 3.1 show that RARE enables open-source LLMs to achieve competitive performance with top closed-source models like GPT-4 and GPT-4o. This research establishes RARE as a scalable solution for improving LLMs in domains where logical coherence and factual integrity are critical.- Anthology ID:
- 2025.acl-long.896
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
- Month:
- July
- Year:
- 2025
- Address:
- Vienna, Austria
- Editors:
- Wanxiang Che, Joyce Nabende, Ekaterina Shutova, Mohammad Taher Pilehvar
- Venue:
- ACL
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 18305–18330
- Language:
- URL:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2025.acl-long.896/
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- Hieu Tran, Zonghai Yao, Zhichao Yang, Junda Wang, Yifan Zhang, Shuo Han, Feiyun Ouyang, and Hong Yu. 2025. RARE: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 18305–18330, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Cite (Informal):
- RARE: Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models (Tran et al., ACL 2025)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing_page/2025.acl-long.896.pdf