Publications

2025

1. SeaKR: Self-aware Knowledge Retrieval for Adaptive Retrieval Augmented Generation
   Zijun Yao*, Weijian Qi*, Liangming Pan, Shulin Cao, Linmei Hu, Weichuan Liu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   ACL, 2025. Oral Presentation (2.9% in Submission)

2. RM-Bench: Benchmarking Reward Models of Language Models with Subtlety and Style
   Yantao Liu, Zijun Yao, Rui Min, Yixin Cao, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   ICLR, 2025. Oral Presentation (1.2% in Submission)

3. LinguaLens: Towards Interpreting Linguistic Mechanisms of Large Language Models via Sparse Auto-Encoder
   Yi Jing, Zijun Yao, Lingxu Ran, Hongzhu Guo, Xiaozhi Wang, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   EMNLP, 2025.

4. How does Transformer Learn Implicit Reasoning?
   Jiaran Ye*, Zijun Yao*, Zhidian Huang, Liangming Pan, Jinxin Liu, Yushi Bai, Amy Xin, Liu Weichuan, Xiaoyin Che, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   NeurIPS, 2025. Spotlight (3.5% in Submission)

5. LLMAEL: Large Language Models are Good Context Augmenters for Entity Linking
   Amy Xin*, Yunjia Qi*, Zijun Yao*, Fangwei Zhu, Kaisheng Zeng, Xu Bin, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   CIKM, 2025.

6. AtomR: Atomic Operator-empowered Large Language Models for Heterogeneous Knowledge Reasoning
   Amy Xin*, Jinxin Liu*, Zijun Yao, Zhicheng Lee, Shulin Cao, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   SIGKDD, 2025.

7. SoAy: A Solution-based LLM API-using Methodology for Academic Information Seeking
   Yuanchun Wang, Jifan Yu, Zijun Yao, Jing Zhang, Yuyang Xie, Shangqing Tu, Yiyang Fu, Youhe Feng, Jinkai Zhang, Jingyao Zhang, Bowen Huang, Yuanyao Li, Huihui Yuan, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang
   SIGKDD, 2025.

8. Steering LVLMs via Sparse Autoencoder for Hallucination Mitigation
   Zhenglin Hua, Jinghan He, Zijun Yao, Tianxu Han, Haiyun Guo, Yuheng Jia, Junfeng Fang
   Findings of EMNLP, 2025.

9. Agentic Reward Modeling: Integrating Human Preferences with Verifiable Correctness Signals for Reliable Reward Systems
   Hao Peng, Yunjia Qi, Xiaozhi Wang, Zijun Yao, Bin Xu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   ACL, 2025.

10. Pre-training Distillation for Large Language Models: A Design Space Exploration
    Hao Peng, Xin Lv, Yushi Bai, Zijun Yao, Jiajie Zhang, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
    ACL, 2025.

11. Advancing Language Model Reasoning through Reinforcement Learning and Inference Scaling
    Zhenyu Hou, Xin Lv, Rui Lu, Jiajie Zhang, Yujiang Li, Zijun Yao, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang, Yuxiao Dong
    ICML, 2025.

2024

1. Untangle the KNOT: Interweaving Conflicting Knowledge and Reasoning Skills in Large Language Models
   Yantao Liu*, Zijun Yao*, Xin Lv, Yuchen Fan, Shulin Cao, Jifan Yu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   LREC-COLING, 2024. [arXiv]

2. Transferable and Efficient Non-Factual Content Detection via Probe Training with Offline Consistency Checking
   Xiaokang Zhang*, Zijun Yao*, Jing Zhang, Kaifeng Yun, Jifan Yu, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang
   ACL, 2024. [arXiv]

3. A General Neural-symbolic Architecture for Knowledge-intensive Complex Reasoning
   Shulin Cao*, Zijun Yao*, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   Neurosymbolic Artificial Intelligence, 2024.

4. FFAEval: Evaluating Dialogue System via Free-For-All Ranking
   Zeyao Ma*, Zijun Yao*, Jing Zhang, Jifan Yu, Xiaohan Zhang, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang
   Findings of EMNLP, 2024.

5. KoLA: Carefully Benchmarking World Knowledge of Large Language Models
   Jifan Yu*, Xiaozhi Wang*, Shangqing Tu, Shulin Cao, Daniel Zhang-Li, Xin Lv, Hao Peng, Zijun Yao, …, Yu Gu, Yuan Yao, Ning Ding, Lei Hou, Zhiyuan Liu, Bin Xu, Jie Tang, Juanzi Li
   ICLR, 2024.

6. DiaKoP: Dialogue-based Knowledge-oriented Programming for Neural-symbolic Knowledge Base Question Answering
   Zhicheng Lee, Zhidian Huang, Zijun Yao, Jinxin Liu, Amy Xin, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   Demo of CIKM, 2024.

7. Evaluating Generative Language Models in Information Extraction as Subjective Question Correction
   Yuchen Fan*, Yantao Liu*, Zijun Yao, Jifan Yu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   LREC-COLING, 2024.

8. A Cause-Effect Look at Alleviating Hallucination of Knowledge-grounded Dialogue Generation
   Jifan Yu, Xiaohan Zhang, Yifan Xu, Xuanyu Lei, Zijun Yao, Jing Zhang, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   LREC-COLING, 2024.

2023

1. VisKoP: Visual Knowledge oriented Programming for Interactive Knowledge Base Question Answering
   Zijun Yao*, Yuanyong Chen*, Xin Lv, Shulin Cao, Amy Xin, Jifan Yu, Hailong Jin, Jianjun Xu, Peng Zhang, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   Demo of ACL, 2023. Best Demo Award

2. KoRC: Knowledge oriented Reading Comprehension Benchmark for Deep Text Understanding
   Zijun Yao*, Yantao Liu*, Xin Lv, Shulin Cao, Jifan Yu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   Findings of ACL, 2023.

3. Probabilistic Tree-of-thought Reasoning for Answering Knowledge-intensive Complex Questions
   Shulin Cao, Jiajie Zhang, Jiaxin Shi, Xin Lv, Zijun Yao, Qi Tian, Juanzi Li, Lei Hou
   Findings of EMNLP, 2023.

4. AKE-GNN: Effective Graph Learning with Adaptive Knowledge Exchange
   Liang Zeng*, Jin Xu*, Zijun Yao, Yanqiao Zhu, Jian Li
   CIKM, 2023.

5. LittleMu: Deploying an Online Virtual Teaching Assistant via Heterogeneous Sources Integration and Chain of Teach Prompts
   Shangqing Tu, Zheyuan Zhang, Jifan Yu, Chunyang Li, Siyu Zhang, Zijun Yao, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   CIKM, 2023.

6. GLM-dialog: Noise-tolerant Pre-training for Knowledge-grounded Dialogue Generation
   Jing Zhang, Xiaokang Zhang, Daniel Zhang-Li, Jifan Yu, Zijun Yao, Zeyao Ma, Yiqi Xu, Haohua Wang, Xiaohan Zhang, Nianyi Lin, Sunrui Lu, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang
   SIGKDD, 2023.

7. MOOCRadar: A Fine-grained and Multi-aspect Knowledge Repository for Improving Cognitive Student Modeling in MOOCs
   Jifan Yu, Mengying Lu, Qingyang Zhong, Zijun Yao, Shangqing Tu, Zhengshan Liao, Xiaoya Li, Manli Li, Lei Hou, Hai-Tao Zheng, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang
   SIGIR, 2023.

2022

1. Program Transfer for Answering Complex Questions over Knowledge Bases
   Shulin Cao, Jiaxin Shi, Zijun Yao, Xin Lv, Jifan Yu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li, Zhiyuan Liu, Jinghui Xiao
   ACL, 2022.

2. Dependency Parsing via Sequence Generation
   Boda Lin*, Zijun Yao*, Jiaxin Shi, Shulin Cao, Binghao Tang, Si Li, Yong Luo, Juanzi Li, Lei Hou
   Findings of EMNLP, 2022.

2021

1. Interpretable and Low-Resource Entity Matching via Decoupling Feature Learning from Decision Making
   Zijun Yao, Chengjiang Li, Tiansi Dong, Xin Lv, Jifan Yu, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li, Yichi Zhang, Zelin Dai
   ACL-IJCNLP, 2021. [arXiv] | [slides]

2. MOOCCubeX: A Large Knowledge-centered Repository for Adaptive Learning in MOOCs
   Jifan Yu, Yuquan Wang, Qingyang Zhong, Gan Luo, Yiming Mao, Kai Sun, Wenzheng Feng, Wei Xu, Shulin Cao, Kaisheng Zeng, Zijun Yao, Lei Hou, Yankai Lin, Peng Li, Jie Zhou, Bin Xu, Juanzi Li, Jie Tang, Maosong Sun
   CIKM, 2021. Outstanding Resource Paper Nomination

3. Calculating Biodiversity under Stochastic Evolutionary Dynamics
   Libin Zhang, Zijun Yao, Bin Wu
   Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2021.

Preprints

1. PairJudge RM: Perform Best-of-N Sampling with Knockout Tournament
   Yantao Liu, Zijun Yao, Rui Min, Yixin Cao, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   Submitted to CoLM, 2025. [arXiv:2501.13007]

2. GLM-4.5: Agentic, Reasoning, and Coding (ARC) Foundation Models
   GLM Team
   [arXiv:2508.06471] (2025)

3. Are Reasoning Models More Prone to Hallucination?
   Zijun Yao*, Yantao Liu*, Yanxu Chen, Jianhui Chen, Junfeng Fang, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li, Tat-Seng Chua
   Submitted to ARR Oct, 2025. [arXiv:2505.23646]

4. When Experimental Economics Meets Large Language Models: Tactics with Evidence
   Shu Wang, Zijun Yao, Shuhuai Zhang, Jianuo Gai, Tracy Xiao Liu, Songfa Zhong
   [arXiv:2505.21371] (2025)

5. Toward Generalizable Evaluation in the LLM Era: A Survey Beyond Benchmarks
   Yixin Cao, Shibo Hong, Xinze Li, Jiahao Ying, Yubo Ma, Haiyuan Liang, Yantao Liu, Zijun Yao, Xiaozhi Wang, Dan Huang, Wenxuan Zhang, Lifu Huang, Muhao Chen, Lei Hou, Qianru Sun, Xingjun Ma, Zuxuan Wu, Min-Yen Kan, David Lo, Qi Zhang, Heng Ji, Jing Jiang, Juanzi Li, Aixin Sun, Xuanjing Huang, Tat-Seng Chua, Yu-Gang Jiang
   [arXiv:2504.18838] (2025)

6. Aligning Teacher with Student Preferences for Tailored Training Data Generation
   Yantao Liu, Zhao Zhang, Zijun Yao, Shulin Cao, Lei Hou, Juanzi Li
   [arXiv:2406.19227] (2024)

^{* Equal contribution}