Breaking the Static Graph: Context-Aware Traversal for Robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Huawei Hong Kong Research Center（华为香港研究中心）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科学与技术大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））
Kwun Hang Lau, Fangyuan Zhang, Boyu Ruan, Yingli Zhou, Qintian Guo, Ruiyuan Zhang, Xiaofang Zhou
Recent advances in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) have shifted from simple vector similarity to structure-aware approaches like HippoRAG, which leverage Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and Personalized PageRank (PPR) to capture multi-hop dependencies. However, these methods suffer from a "Static Graph Fallacy": they rely on fixed transition probabilities determined during indexing. This rigidity ignores the query-dependent nature of edge relevance, causing semantic drift where random walks are diverted into high-degree "hub" nodes before reaching critical downstream evidence. Consequently, models often achieve high partial recall but fail to retrieve the complete evidence chain required for multi-hop queries. To address this, we propose CatRAG, Context-Aware Traversal for robust RAG, a framework that builds on the HippoRAG 2 architecture and transforms the static KG into a query-adaptive navigation structure. We introduce a multi-faceted framework to steer the random walk: (1) Symbolic Anchoring, which injects weak entity constraints to regularize the random walk; (2) Query-Aware Dynamic Edge Weighting, which dynamically modulates graph structure, to prune irrelevant paths while amplifying those aligned with the query's intent; and (3) Key-Fact Passage Weight Enhancement, a cost-efficient bias that structurally anchors the random walk to likely evidence. Experiments across four multi-hop benchmarks demonstrate that CatRAG consistently outperforms state of the art baselines. Our analysis reveals that while standard Recall metrics show modest gains, CatRAG achieves substantial improvements in reasoning completeness, the capacity to recover the entire evidence path without gaps. These results reveal that our approach effectively bridges the gap between retrieving partial context and enabling fully grounded reasoning. Resources are available at https://github.com/kwunhang/CatRAG.
A Navigational Approach for Comprehensive RAG via Traversal over Proposition Graphs
Idiap Research Institute（日内瓦研究所）；École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne（联邦理工学院洛桑分校）；University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；CRUK Manchester Institute（CRUK曼彻斯特研究所）
A Systematic Study of Retrieval Pipeline Design for Retrieval-Augmented Medical Question Answering
Department of Mechatronics & Industrial Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology（吉大港工程与技术大学机电与工业工程系）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology（吉大港工程与技术大学机械工程系）
R^2AG: Incorporating Retrieval Information into Retrieval Augmented Generation
School of Computer Science, South China Normal University（华南师范大学计算机学院）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）
Leveraging Spreading Activation for Improved Document Retrieval in Knowledge-Graph-Based RAG Systems
UP FAMNIT, University of Primorska（普里摩里卡大学FAMNIT学院）；InnoRenew CoE, UP IAM, University of Primorska（InnoRenew联合学院、UP IAM、普里摩里卡大学）；University of Szeged, Department of Applied Informatics（塞格德大学应用信息学系）
Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented LMs with a Two-stage Consistency Learning Compressor
College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University（天津大学智能与计算学部）；Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, China Mobile Communication Group Tianjin Co., Ltd.（中国移动通信集团天津有限公司人工智能实验室）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
DioR: Adaptive Cognitive Detection and Contextual Retrieval Optimization for Dynamic Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Intelligent Education Technology and Application, Zhejiang Normal University（浙江智能教育技术与应用重点实验室，浙江师范大学）；School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang Normal University（浙江师范大学计算机科学与技术学院）；School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University（东南大学计算机科学与工程学院）；Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学计算机科学与工程系）；School of Computer Science and Technology, Soochow University（苏州大学计算机科学与技术学院）
RAR$^2$: Retrieval-Augmented Medical Reasoning via Thought-Driven Retrieval
Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（计算机系，香港理工大学）；Research Institute of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems and Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology（可信自主系统研究院和计算机科学与工程系，南方科技大学）
ParetoRAG: Leveraging Sentence-Context Attention for Robust and Efficient Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院信息工程研究所）；School of Cybersecurity, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学网络空间安全学院）；Alibaba Group（阿里巴巴集团）
RPO: Retrieval Preference Optimization for Robust Retrieval-Augmented Generation
National Engineering Research Center of Speech and Language Information Processing, University of Science and Technology of China（语音与语言信息处理国家工程研究中心，中国科学技术大学）；State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Intelligence, iFLYTEK Research（认知智能国家重点实验室，iFLYTEK研究院）
