A Survey on Long Text Modeling with Transformers
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Abstract (arXiv)
Modeling long texts has been an essential technique in the field of natural language processing (NLP). With the ever-growing number of long documents, it is important to develop effective modeling methods that can process and analyze such texts. However, long texts pose important research challenges for existing text models, with more complex semantics and special characteristics. In this paper, we provide an overview of the recent advances on long texts modeling based on Transformer models. Firstly, we introduce the formal definition of long text modeling. Then, as the core content, we discuss how to process long input to satisfy the length limitation and design improved Transformer architectures to effectively extend the maximum context length. Following this, we discuss how to adapt Transformer models to capture the special characteristics of long texts. Finally, we describe four typical applications involving long text modeling and conclude this paper with a discussion of future directions. Our survey intends to provide researchers with a synthesis and pointer to related work on long text modeling.
Key facts. Cited by 47 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 60 of its 77 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2023.
Builds on
60 of 77 references.
References · 60
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- 2019Hierarchical Transformers for Long Document Classificationcited by 104
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- 2020Recurrent Chunking Mechanisms for Long-Text Machine Reading Comprehensioncited by 29
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- 2022Toward Unifying Text Segmentation and Long Document Summarizationcited by 28
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- 2021Long Document Summarization in a Low Resource Setting using Pretrained Language Modelscited by 24
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