OpenReward: Learning to Reward Long-form Agentic Tasks via Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Ziyou, Shi, Zhengliang, Zhu, Minghang, Li, Haitao, Sun, Teng, Ren, Pengjie, Verberne, Suzan, Ren, Zhaochun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hu, Ziyou
Shi, Zhengliang
Zhu, Minghang
Li, Haitao
Sun, Teng
Ren, Pengjie
Verberne, Suzan
Ren, Zhaochun
author_facet Hu, Ziyou
Shi, Zhengliang
Zhu, Minghang
Li, Haitao
Sun, Teng
Ren, Pengjie
Verberne, Suzan
Ren, Zhaochun
contents Reward models (RMs) have become essential for aligning large language models (LLMs), serving as scalable proxies for human evaluation in both training and inference. However, existing RMs struggle on knowledge-intensive and long-form tasks, where evaluating correctness requires grounding beyond the model's internal knowledge. This limitation hinders them from reliably discriminating subtle quality differences, especially when external evidence is necessary. To address this, we introduce OpenRM, a tool-augmented long-form reward model that systematically judges open-ended responses by invoking external tools to gather relevant evidence. We train OpenRM with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) on over 27K synthesized pairwise examples generated through a controllable data synthesis framework. The training objective jointly supervises intermediate tool usage and final outcome accuracy, incentivizing our reward model to learn effective evidence-based judgment strategies. Extensive experiments on three newly-collected datasets and two widely-used benchmarks demonstrate that OpenRM substantially outperforms existing reward modeling approaches. As a further step, we integrate OpenRM into both inference-time response selection and training-time data selection. This yields consistent gains in downstream LLM alignment tasks, highlighting the potential of tool-augmented reward models for scaling reliable long-form evaluation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_24636
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle OpenReward: Learning to Reward Long-form Agentic Tasks via Reinforcement Learning
Hu, Ziyou
Shi, Zhengliang
Zhu, Minghang
Li, Haitao
Sun, Teng
Ren, Pengjie
Verberne, Suzan
Ren, Zhaochun
Computation and Language
Reward models (RMs) have become essential for aligning large language models (LLMs), serving as scalable proxies for human evaluation in both training and inference. However, existing RMs struggle on knowledge-intensive and long-form tasks, where evaluating correctness requires grounding beyond the model's internal knowledge. This limitation hinders them from reliably discriminating subtle quality differences, especially when external evidence is necessary. To address this, we introduce OpenRM, a tool-augmented long-form reward model that systematically judges open-ended responses by invoking external tools to gather relevant evidence. We train OpenRM with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) on over 27K synthesized pairwise examples generated through a controllable data synthesis framework. The training objective jointly supervises intermediate tool usage and final outcome accuracy, incentivizing our reward model to learn effective evidence-based judgment strategies. Extensive experiments on three newly-collected datasets and two widely-used benchmarks demonstrate that OpenRM substantially outperforms existing reward modeling approaches. As a further step, we integrate OpenRM into both inference-time response selection and training-time data selection. This yields consistent gains in downstream LLM alignment tasks, highlighting the potential of tool-augmented reward models for scaling reliable long-form evaluation.
title OpenReward: Learning to Reward Long-form Agentic Tasks via Reinforcement Learning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.24636