Can Knowledge-Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation Really Retrieve What You Need?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yu, Junchi, Liu, Yujie, Gu, Jindong, Torr, Philip, Zhou, Dongzhan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yu, Junchi
Liu, Yujie
Gu, Jindong
Torr, Philip
Zhou, Dongzhan
author_facet Yu, Junchi
Liu, Yujie
Gu, Jindong
Torr, Philip
Zhou, Dongzhan
contents Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based on knowledge graphs (KGs) enhances large language models (LLMs) by providing structured and interpretable external knowledge. However, existing KG-based RAG methods struggle to retrieve accurate and diverse information from text-rich KGs for complex real-world queries. Process Reward Models (PRMs) offer a way to align the retrieval process of KG-based RAG with query-specific knowledge requirements, but they heavily rely on process-level supervision signals that are expensive and hard to obtain on KGs. To address this challenge, we propose GraphFlow, a framework that efficiently retrieves accurate and diverse knowledge required for real-world queries from text-rich KGs. GraphFlow employs a transition-based flow matching objective to jointly optimize a retrieval policy and a flow estimator. The flow estimator factorizes the reward of the retrieval outcome into the intermediate retrieval states. Such reward factorization guides the retrieval policy to retrieve candidates from KGs in proportion to their reward. This allows GraphFlow to explore high-quality regions of KGs that yield diverse and relevant results. We evaluate GraphFlow on the STaRK benchmark, which includes real-world queries from multiple domains over text-rich KGs. GraphFlow outperforms strong KG-RAG baselines, including GPT-4o, by 10% on average in hit rate and recall. It also shows strong generalization to unseen KGs, demonstrating its effectiveness and robustness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_16582
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Can Knowledge-Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation Really Retrieve What You Need?
Yu, Junchi
Liu, Yujie
Gu, Jindong
Torr, Philip
Zhou, Dongzhan
Artificial Intelligence
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based on knowledge graphs (KGs) enhances large language models (LLMs) by providing structured and interpretable external knowledge. However, existing KG-based RAG methods struggle to retrieve accurate and diverse information from text-rich KGs for complex real-world queries. Process Reward Models (PRMs) offer a way to align the retrieval process of KG-based RAG with query-specific knowledge requirements, but they heavily rely on process-level supervision signals that are expensive and hard to obtain on KGs. To address this challenge, we propose GraphFlow, a framework that efficiently retrieves accurate and diverse knowledge required for real-world queries from text-rich KGs. GraphFlow employs a transition-based flow matching objective to jointly optimize a retrieval policy and a flow estimator. The flow estimator factorizes the reward of the retrieval outcome into the intermediate retrieval states. Such reward factorization guides the retrieval policy to retrieve candidates from KGs in proportion to their reward. This allows GraphFlow to explore high-quality regions of KGs that yield diverse and relevant results. We evaluate GraphFlow on the STaRK benchmark, which includes real-world queries from multiple domains over text-rich KGs. GraphFlow outperforms strong KG-RAG baselines, including GPT-4o, by 10% on average in hit rate and recall. It also shows strong generalization to unseen KGs, demonstrating its effectiveness and robustness.
title Can Knowledge-Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation Really Retrieve What You Need?
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.16582