mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

TransferNet: An Effective and Transparent Framework for Multi-hop Question Answering over Relation Graph

arXiv 2104.07302 ↗First posted 15 Apr 2021cs.CLcited by 60

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Cited by 21 in LLM reasoning, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-hop Question Answering (QA) is a challenging task because it requires precise reasoning with entity relations at every step towards the answer. The relations can be represented in terms of labels in knowledge graph (e.g., textitspouse) or text in text corpus (e.g., textitthey have been married for 26 years). Existing models usually infer the answer by predicting the sequential relation path or aggregating the hidden graph features. The former is hard to optimize, and the latter lacks interpretability. In this paper, we propose TransferNet, an effective and transparent model for multi-hop QA, which supports both label and text relations in a unified framework. TransferNet jumps across entities at multiple steps. At each step, it attends to different parts of the question, computes activated scores for relations, and then transfer the previous entity scores along activated relations in a differentiable way. We carry out extensive experiments on three datasets and demonstrate that TransferNet surpasses the state-of-the-art models by a large margin. In particular, on MetaQA, it achieves 100% accuracy in 2-hop and 3-hop questions. By qualitative analysis, we show that TransferNet has transparent and interpretable intermediate results.

Key facts. Cited by 60 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2021.

Builds on

25 of 39 references.

References · 25

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2016SQuAD: 100,000+ Questions for Machine Comprehension of Textcited by 4,115
  3. 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
  4. 2017TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehensioncited by 2,895
  5. 2019ALBERT: A Lite BERT for Self-supervised Learning of Language Representationscited by 2,772
  6. 2014Empirical Evaluation of Gated Recurrent Neural Networks on Sequence Modelingcited by 2,341
  7. 2016Complex Embeddings for Simple Link Predictioncited by 897
  8. 2019DROP: A Reading Comprehension Benchmark Requiring Discrete Reasoning Over Paragraphscited by 883
  9. 2017Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questionscited by 777
  10. 2019On the Variance of the Adaptive Learning Rate and Beyondcited by 763
  11. 2018The Web as a Knowledge-base for Answering Complex Questionscited by 409
  12. 2016Key-Value Memory Networks for Directly Reading Documentscited by 223
13 more
  1. 2019PullNet: Open Domain Question Answering with Iterative Retrieval on Knowledge Bases and Textcited by 182
  2. 2017Variational Reasoning for Question Answering with Knowledge Graphcited by 170
  3. 2018Open Domain Question Answering Using Early Fusion of Knowledge Bases and Textcited by 167
  4. 2015Large-scale Simple Question Answering with Memory Networkscited by 127
  5. 2016Neural Symbolic Machines: Learning Semantic Parsers on Freebase with Weak Supervisioncited by 101
  6. 2020Retrospective Reader for Machine Reading Comprehensioncited by 86
  7. 2019Hierarchical Graph Network for Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 83
  8. 2019Cognitive Graph for Multi-Hop Reading Comprehension at Scalecited by 65
  9. 2019Select, Answer and Explain: Interpretable Multi-hop Reading Comprehension over Multiple Documentscited by 57
  10. 2018An Interpretable Reasoning Network for Multi-Relation Question Answeringcited by 47
  11. 2020Scalable Neural Methods for Reasoning With a Symbolic Knowledge Basecited by 32
  12. 2018SimpleQuestions Nearly Solved: A New Upperbound and Baseline Approachcited by 18
  13. 2019Simple Question Answering with Subgraph Ranking and Joint-Scoringcited by 8

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 4; 2022: 11; 2023: 15; 2024: 5; 2025: 13; 2026: 12.

60 papers.

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  1. 2023Reasoning on Graphs: Faithful and Interpretable Large Language Model Reasoningcited by 326
  2. 2024GNN-RAG: Graph Neural Retrieval for Large Language Model Reasoningcited by 128
  3. 2022UniKGQA: Unified Retrieval and Reasoning for Solving Multi-hop Question Answering Over Knowledge Graphcited by 100
  4. 2021RnG-KBQA: Generation Augmented Iterative Ranking for Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 86
  5. 2022Mintaka: A Complex, Natural, and Multilingual Dataset for End-to-End Question Answeringcited by 71
  6. 2022TIARA: Multi-grained Retrieval for Robust Question Answering over Large Knowledge Basescited by 59
  7. 2021Complex Knowledge Base Question Answering: A Surveycited by 52
  8. 2023KnowledGPT: Enhancing Large Language Models with Retrieval and Storage Access on Knowledge Basescited by 52
  9. 2023ChatKBQA: A Generate-then-Retrieve Framework for Knowledge Base Question Answering with Fine-tuned Large Language Modelscited by 44
  10. 2021Program Transfer for Answering Complex Questions over Knowledge Basescited by 34
  11. 2023ReasoningLM: Enabling Structural Subgraph Reasoning in Pre-trained Language Models for Question Answering over Knowledge Graphcited by 23
  12. 2023KnowledgeNavigator: Leveraging Large Language Models for Enhanced Reasoning over Knowledge Graphcited by 22
38 more
  1. 2022ReaRev: Adaptive Reasoning for Question Answering over Knowledge Graphscited by 16
  2. 2024Enhancing Ethical Explanations of Large Language Models through Iterative Symbolic Refinementcited by 16
  3. 2022Co-guiding Net: Achieving Mutual Guidances between Multiple Intent Detection and Slot Filling via Heterogeneous Semantics-Label Graphscited by 14
  4. 2021Expanding End-to-End Question Answering on Differentiable Knowledge Graphs with Intersectioncited by 12
  5. 2023Reasoning over Hierarchical Question Decomposition Tree for Explainable Question Answeringcited by 11
  6. 2025BYOKG-RAG: Multi-Strategy Graph Retrieval for Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 10
  7. 2022Semantic Structure based Query Graph Prediction for Question Answering over Knowledge Graphcited by 9
  8. 2025Reliable Reasoning Path: Distilling Effective Guidance for LLM Reasoning with Knowledge Graphscited by 9
  9. 2025FRAG: A Flexible Modular Framework for Retrieval-Augmented Generation based on Knowledge Graphscited by 8
  10. 2023KoRC: Knowledge oriented Reading Comprehension Benchmark for Deep Text Understandingcited by 7
  11. 2023NuTrea: Neural Tree Search for Context-guided Multi-hop KGQAcited by 7
  12. 2025EPERM: An Evidence Path Enhanced Reasoning Model for Knowledge Graph Question and Answeringcited by 7
  13. 2022Improving Question Answering over Knowledge Graphs Using Graph Summarizationcited by 6
  14. 2022CBR-iKB: A Case-Based Reasoning Approach for Question Answering over Incomplete Knowledge Basescited by 6
  15. 2024SimGRAG: Leveraging Similar Subgraphs for Knowledge Graphs Driven Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 6
  16. 2025DAMR: Efficient and Adaptive Context-Aware Knowledge Graph Question Answering with LLM-Guided MCTScited by 6
  17. 2022QAGCN: Answering Multi-Relation Questions via Single-Step Implicit Reasoning over Knowledge Graphscited by 5
  18. 2024How Proficient Are Large Language Models in Formal Languages? An In-Depth Insight for Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 5
  19. 2025KERAG: Knowledge-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Advanced Question Answeringcited by 5
  20. 2025Search-on-Graph: Iterative Informed Navigation for Large Language Model Reasoning on Knowledge Graphscited by 5
  21. 2026NeuroSymActive: Differentiable Neural-Symbolic Reasoning with Active Exploration for Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 3
  22. 2026S-Path-RAG: Semantic-Aware Shortest-Path Retrieval Augmented Generation for Multi-Hop Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 3
  23. 2022Exploiting Hybrid Semantics of Relation Paths for Multi-hop Question Answering Over Knowledge Graphscited by 2
  24. 2023VisKoP: Visual Knowledge oriented Programming for Interactive Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 2
  25. 2023Co-guiding for Multi-intent Spoken Language Understandingcited by 2
  26. 2025Divide by Question, Conquer by Agent: SPLIT-RAG with Question-Driven Graph Partitioningcited by 2
  27. 2026Multi-hop Reasoning and Retrieval in Embedding Space: Leveraging Large Language Models with Knowledgecited by 2
  28. 2022Knowledge-enhanced Iterative Instruction Generation and Reasoning for Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 1
  29. 2023Semantic Operator Prediction and Applicationscited by 1
  30. 2023Cross-Lingual Question Answering over Knowledge Base as Reading Comprehensioncited by 1
  31. 2023Relation-Aware Question Answering for Heterogeneous Knowledge Graphscited by 1
  32. 2024KB-Plugin: A Plug-and-play Framework for Large Language Models to Induce Programs over Low-resourced Knowledge Basescited by 1
  33. 2025Knowledge Fusion via Bidirectional Information Aggregationcited by 1
  34. 2025Encoder-Free Knowledge-Graph Reasoning with LLMs via Hyperdimensional Path Retrievalcited by 1
  35. 2025UniRel: Relation-Centric Knowledge Graph Question Answering with RL-Tuned LLM Reasoningcited by 1
  36. 2026RouterKGQA: Specialized--General Model Routing for Constraint-Aware Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 1
  37. 2026Bounded Path Context: A Controlled Study of Visible Path History in LLM-Based Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 1
  38. 2026Theseus in the Graph: Towards Traceable Multi-Hop Graph Navigationcited by 1

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