ComLQ: Benchmarking Complex Logical Queries in Information Retrieval

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Main Authors: Xu, Ganlin, Yin, Zhitao, Zhang, Linghao, Liang, Jiaqing, Lu, Weijia, Zhang, Xiaodong, Yang, Zhifei, Jiang, Sihang, Yang, Deqing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Xu, Ganlin
Yin, Zhitao
Zhang, Linghao
Liang, Jiaqing
Lu, Weijia
Zhang, Xiaodong
Yang, Zhifei
Jiang, Sihang
Yang, Deqing
author_facet Xu, Ganlin
Yin, Zhitao
Zhang, Linghao
Liang, Jiaqing
Lu, Weijia
Zhang, Xiaodong
Yang, Zhifei
Jiang, Sihang
Yang, Deqing
contents Information retrieval (IR) systems play a critical role in navigating information overload across various applications. Existing IR benchmarks primarily focus on simple queries that are semantically analogous to single- and multi-hop relations, overlooking \emph{complex logical queries} involving first-order logic operations such as conjunction ($\land$), disjunction ($\lor$), and negation ($\lnot$). Thus, these benchmarks can not be used to sufficiently evaluate the performance of IR models on complex queries in real-world scenarios. To address this problem, we propose a novel method leveraging large language models (LLMs) to construct a new IR dataset \textbf{ComLQ} for \textbf{Com}plex \textbf{L}ogical \textbf{Q}ueries, which comprises 2,909 queries and 11,251 candidate passages. A key challenge in constructing the dataset lies in capturing the underlying logical structures within unstructured text. Therefore, by designing the subgraph-guided prompt with the subgraph indicator, an LLM (such as GPT-4o) is guided to generate queries with specific logical structures based on selected passages. All query-passage pairs in ComLQ are ensured \emph{structure conformity} and \emph{evidence distribution} through expert annotation. To better evaluate whether retrievers can handle queries with negation, we further propose a new evaluation metric, \textbf{Log-Scaled Negation Consistency} (\textbf{LSNC@$K$}). As a supplement to standard relevance-based metrics (such as nDCG and mAP), LSNC@$K$ measures whether top-$K$ retrieved passages violate negation conditions in queries. Our experimental results under zero-shot settings demonstrate existing retrieval models' limited performance on complex logical queries, especially on queries with negation, exposing their inferior capabilities of modeling exclusion.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_12004
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ComLQ: Benchmarking Complex Logical Queries in Information Retrieval
Xu, Ganlin
Yin, Zhitao
Zhang, Linghao
Liang, Jiaqing
Lu, Weijia
Zhang, Xiaodong
Yang, Zhifei
Jiang, Sihang
Yang, Deqing
Information Retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) systems play a critical role in navigating information overload across various applications. Existing IR benchmarks primarily focus on simple queries that are semantically analogous to single- and multi-hop relations, overlooking \emph{complex logical queries} involving first-order logic operations such as conjunction ($\land$), disjunction ($\lor$), and negation ($\lnot$). Thus, these benchmarks can not be used to sufficiently evaluate the performance of IR models on complex queries in real-world scenarios. To address this problem, we propose a novel method leveraging large language models (LLMs) to construct a new IR dataset \textbf{ComLQ} for \textbf{Com}plex \textbf{L}ogical \textbf{Q}ueries, which comprises 2,909 queries and 11,251 candidate passages. A key challenge in constructing the dataset lies in capturing the underlying logical structures within unstructured text. Therefore, by designing the subgraph-guided prompt with the subgraph indicator, an LLM (such as GPT-4o) is guided to generate queries with specific logical structures based on selected passages. All query-passage pairs in ComLQ are ensured \emph{structure conformity} and \emph{evidence distribution} through expert annotation. To better evaluate whether retrievers can handle queries with negation, we further propose a new evaluation metric, \textbf{Log-Scaled Negation Consistency} (\textbf{LSNC@$K$}). As a supplement to standard relevance-based metrics (such as nDCG and mAP), LSNC@$K$ measures whether top-$K$ retrieved passages violate negation conditions in queries. Our experimental results under zero-shot settings demonstrate existing retrieval models' limited performance on complex logical queries, especially on queries with negation, exposing their inferior capabilities of modeling exclusion.
title ComLQ: Benchmarking Complex Logical Queries in Information Retrieval
topic Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12004