mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Survey on Complex Knowledge Base Question Answering: Methods, Challenges and Solutions

arXiv 2105.11644 ↗First posted 25 May 2021cs.CLcited by 77

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Abstract (arXiv)

Knowledge base question answering (KBQA) aims to answer a question over a knowledge base (KB). Recently, a large number of studies focus on semantically or syntactically complicated questions. In this paper, we elaborately summarize the typical challenges and solutions for complex KBQA. We begin with introducing the background about the KBQA task. Next, we present the two mainstream categories of methods for complex KBQA, namely semantic parsing-based (SP-based) methods and information retrieval-based (IR-based) methods. We then review the advanced methods comprehensively from the perspective of the two categories. Specifically, we explicate their solutions to the typical challenges. Finally, we conclude and discuss some promising directions for future research.

Key facts. Cited by 77 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 26 of its 72 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 May 2021.

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26 of 72 references.

References · 26

  1. 2019Language Models as Knowledge Bases?cited by 1,922
  2. 2019How Can We Know What Language Models Know?cited by 953
  3. 2018The Web as a Knowledge-base for Answering Complex Questionscited by 409
  4. 2019Measuring Compositional Generalization: A Comprehensive Method on Realistic Datacited by 280
  5. 2016Key-Value Memory Networks for Directly Reading Documentscited by 223
  6. 2020Retrieve, Program, Repeat: Complex Knowledge Base Question Answering via Alternate Meta-learningcited by 216
  7. 2019PullNet: Open Domain Question Answering with Iterative Retrieval on Knowledge Bases and Textcited by 182
  8. 2017Variational Reasoning for Question Answering with Knowledge Graphcited by 170
  9. 2020Beyond I.I.D.: Three Levels of Generalization for Question Answering on Knowledge Basescited by 169
  10. 2018Open Domain Question Answering Using Early Fusion of Knowledge Bases and Textcited by 167
  11. 2015Large-scale Simple Question Answering with Memory Networkscited by 127
  12. 2019Learning by Abstraction: The Neural State Machinecited by 113
14 more
  1. 2016Neural Symbolic Machines: Learning Semantic Parsers on Freebase with Weak Supervisioncited by 101
  2. 2021Improving Multi-hop Knowledge Base Question Answering by Learning Intermediate Supervision Signalscited by 100
  3. 2019Inducing Relational Knowledge from BERTcited by 75
  4. 2016Image-embodied Knowledge Representation Learningcited by 68
  5. 2018An Interpretable Reasoning Network for Multi-Relation Question Answeringcited by 47
  6. 2020SPARQA: Skeleton-based Semantic Parsing for Complex Questions over Knowledge Basescited by 47
  7. 2020A Survey on Complex Question Answering over Knowledge Base: Recent Advances and Challengescited by 47
  8. 2019UHop: An Unrestricted-Hop Relation Extraction Framework for Knowledge-Based Question Answeringcited by 37
  9. 2019Improving Question Answering over Incomplete KBs with Knowledge-Aware Readercited by 37
  10. 2018Learning to Rank Query Graphs for Complex Question Answering over Knowledge Graphscited by 17
  11. 2019Introduction to Neural Network based Approaches for Question Answering over Knowledge Graphscited by 15
  12. 2019Leveraging Frequent Query Substructures to Generate Formal Queries for Complex Question Answeringcited by 15
  13. 2020Less is More: Data-Efficient Complex Question Answering over Knowledge Basescited by 9
  14. 2020Mining Implicit Entity Preference from User-Item Interaction Data for Knowledge Graph Completion via Adversarial Learningcited by 6

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 6; 2022: 15; 2023: 21; 2024: 20; 2025: 11; 2026: 4.

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  1. 2023StructGPT: A General Framework for Large Language Model to Reason over Structured Datacited by 339
  2. 2024Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Surveycited by 320
  3. 2022UniKGQA: Unified Retrieval and Reasoning for Solving Multi-hop Question Answering Over Knowledge Graphcited by 100
  4. 2023Few-shot In-context Learning for Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 74
  5. 2022Mintaka: A Complex, Natural, and Multilingual Dataset for End-to-End Question Answeringcited by 71
  6. 2021Complex Knowledge Base Question Answering: A Surveycited by 52
  7. 2023FlexKBQA: A Flexible LLM-Powered Framework for Few-Shot Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 51
  8. 2022Multi-modal Contrastive Representation Learning for Entity Alignmentcited by 37
  9. 2021Program Transfer for Answering Complex Questions over Knowledge Basescited by 34
  10. 2023QUEST: A Retrieval Dataset of Entity-Seeking Queries with Implicit Set Operationscited by 30
  11. 2024MemSim: A Bayesian Simulator for Evaluating Memory of LLM-based Personal Assistantscited by 24
  12. 2023PokeMQA: Programmable knowledge editing for Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 23
38 more
  1. 2022Knowledge Base Question Answering: A Semantic Parsing Perspectivecited by 22
  2. 2022Open-world Story Generation with Structured Knowledge Enhancement: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 21
  3. 2024Small Agent Can Also Rock! Empowering Small Language Models as Hallucination Detectorcited by 20
  4. 2022ReaRev: Adaptive Reasoning for Question Answering over Knowledge Graphscited by 16
  5. 2023Question Decomposition Tree for Answering Complex Questions over Knowledge Basescited by 15
  6. 2024Prompting Large Language Models with Knowledge Graphs for Question Answering Involving Long-tail Factscited by 14
  7. 2024Research Trends for the Interplay between Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphscited by 14
  8. 2024OneEdit: A Neural-Symbolic Collaboratively Knowledge Editing Systemcited by 12
  9. 2023Synergistic Interplay between Search and Large Language Models for Information Retrievalcited by 11
  10. 2023Large Language Models Meet Knowledge Graphs to Answer Factoid Questionscited by 11
  11. 2024Right for Right Reasons: Large Language Models for Verifiable Commonsense Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 11
  12. 2024Leveraging Logical Rules in Knowledge Editing: A Cherry on the Topcited by 11
  13. 2023Semantic Parsing for Conversational Question Answering over Knowledge Graphscited by 10
  14. 2022Great Truths are Always Simple: A Rather Simple Knowledge Encoder for Enhancing the Commonsense Reasoning Capacity of Pre-Trained Modelscited by 9
  15. 2024Temporal Knowledge Graph Question Answering: A Surveycited by 9
  16. 2024NAT-NL2GQL: A Novel Multi-Agent Framework for Translating Natural Language to Graph Query Languagecited by 9
  17. 2025Beyond Seen Data: Improving KBQA Generalization Through Schema-Guided Logical Form Generationcited by 8
  18. 2021Improving Embedded Knowledge Graph Multi-hop Question Answering by introducing Relational Chain Reasoningcited by 7
  19. 2021Graph-augmented Learning to Rank for Querying Large-scale Knowledge Graphcited by 7
  20. 2023Pay More Attention to Relation Exploration for Knowledge Base Question Answeringcited by 7
  21. 2023TableQAKit: A Comprehensive and Practical Toolkit for Table-based Question Answeringcited by 7
  22. 2023NuTrea: Neural Tree Search for Context-guided Multi-hop KGQAcited by 7
  23. 2023GPT4SGG: Synthesizing Scene Graphs from Holistic and Region-specific Narrativescited by 7
  24. 2022CBR-iKB: A Case-Based Reasoning Approach for Question Answering over Incomplete Knowledge Basescited by 6
  25. 2023GETT-QA: Graph Embedding based T2T Transformer for Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 6
  26. 2023From Alignment to Entailment: A Unified Textual Entailment Framework for Entity Alignmentcited by 6
  27. 2023MarkQA: A large scale KBQA dataset with numerical reasoningcited by 6
  28. 2022Evaluation of Question Answering Systems: Complexity of judging a natural languagecited by 5
  29. 2022GraphWOZ: Dialogue Management with Conversational Knowledge Graphscited by 5
  30. 2023May I Ask a Follow-up Question? Understanding the Benefits of Conversations in Neural Network Explainabilitycited by 5
  31. 2024Self-Improvement Programming for Temporal Knowledge Graph Question Answeringcited by 5
  32. 2024KET-QA: A Dataset for Knowledge Enhanced Table Question Answeringcited by 5
  33. 2025GraphRAFT: Retrieval Augmented Fine-Tuning for Knowledge Graphs on Graph Databasescited by 5
  34. 2025Temporal Information Retrieval via Time-Specifier Model Mergingcited by 5
  35. 2021Attention-based Aspect Reasoning for Knowledge Base Question Answering on Clinical Notescited by 4
  36. 2021Injecting Numerical Reasoning Skills into Knowledge Base Question Answering Modelscited by 4
  37. 2022High-quality Task Division for Large-scale Entity Alignmentcited by 4
  38. 2022ReasonChainQA: Text-based Complex Question Answering with Explainable Evidence Chainscited by 4

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