# Chain-of-Note: Enhancing Robustness in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09210 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09210/

## Key facts

- Cited by 184 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Generation and context integration, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 43 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2023.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Generation and context integration](https://mlsanity.com/rag/generation-and-context-integration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03551/) (2017)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03629/) (2022)
- [Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04426/) (2021)
- [Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01282/) (2020)
- [When Not to Trust Language Models: Investigating Effectiveness of Parametric and Non-Parametric Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10511/) (2022)
- [Atlas: Few-shot Learning with Retrieval Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03299/) (2022)
- [Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10509/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models Can Be Easily Distracted by Irrelevant Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00093/) (2023)
- [Generalization through Memorization: Nearest Neighbor Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00172/) (2019)
- [REPLUG: Retrieval-Augmented Black-Box Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12652/) (2023)
- [Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00051/) (2017)
- [Multimodal Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00923/) (2023)
- [Siren's Song in the AI Ocean: A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01219/) (2023)
- [Language Models are Multilingual Chain-of-Thought Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03057/) (2022)
- [Is ChatGPT a General-Purpose Natural Language Processing Task Solver?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06476/) (2023)
- [RocketQA: An Optimized Training Approach to Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08191/) (2020)
- [Making Retrieval-Augmented Language Models Robust to Irrelevant Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01558/) (2023)
- [Selection-Inference: Exploiting Large Language Models for Interpretable Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09712/) (2022)
- [Chain-of-Verification Reduces Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11495/) (2023)
- [FreshLLMs: Refreshing Large Language Models with Search Engine Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03214/) (2023)
- [Generate rather than Retrieve: Large Language Models are Strong Context Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10063/) (2022)
- [Time-Aware Language Models as Temporal Knowledge Bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15110/) (2021)
- [RealTime QA: What's the Answer Right Now?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.13332/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 184)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12110/) (2025)
- [LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10813/) (2024)
- [A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07927/) (2024)
- [Personal LLM Agents: Insights and Survey about the Capability, Efficiency and Security](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05459/) (2024)
- [RankRAG: Unifying Context Ranking with Retrieval-Augmented Generation in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02485/) (2024)
- [Don't Hallucinate, Abstain: Identifying LLM Knowledge Gaps via Multi-LLM Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00367/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Recent Advances in LLM-Based Multi-turn Dialogue Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18013/) (2024)
- [Large Legal Fictions: Profiling Legal Hallucinations in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01301/) (2024)
- [RQ-RAG: Learning to Refine Queries for Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00610/) (2024)
- [MemSkill: Learning and Evolving Memory Skills for Self-Evolving Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02474/) (2026)
- [Long-Context LLMs Meet RAG: Overcoming Challenges for Long Inputs in RAG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05983/) (2024)
- [On Memory Construction and Retrieval for Personalized Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05589/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Noise Robustness of Retrieval-Augmented Language Models with Adaptive Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20978/) (2024)
- [Dense X Retrieval: What Retrieval Granularity Should We Use?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06648/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Customized Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13958/) (2025)
- [Speculative RAG: Enhancing Retrieval Augmented Generation through Drafting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08223/) (2024)
- [KAG: Boosting LLMs in Professional Domains via Knowledge Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13731/) (2024)
- [Inference Scaling for Long-Context Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04343/) (2024)
- [Think-on-Graph 2.0: Deep and Faithful Large Language Model Reasoning with Knowledge-guided Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10805/) (2024)
- [Astute RAG: Overcoming Imperfect Retrieval Augmentation and Knowledge Conflicts for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07176/) (2024)
- [Generate-then-Ground in Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14891/) (2024)
- [CRUD-RAG: A Comprehensive Chinese Benchmark for Retrieval-Augmented Generation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17043/) (2024)
- [DALK: Dynamic Co-Augmentation of LLMs and KG to answer Alzheimer's Disease Questions with Scientific Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04819/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Hallucination: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06265/) (2025)
- [LinearRAG: Linear Graph Retrieval Augmented Generation on Large-scale Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10114/) (2025)
- [Blinded by Generated Contexts: How Language Models Merge Generated and Retrieved Contexts When Knowledge Conflicts?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11911/) (2024)
- [Beyond Chain-of-Thought: A Survey of Chain-of-X Paradigms for LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15676/) (2024)
- [RA-ISF: Learning to Answer and Understand from Retrieval Augmentation via Iterative Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06840/) (2024)
- [How Easily do Irrelevant Inputs Skew the Responses of Large Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03302/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-augmented language models (RALMs) represent a substantial advancement in the capabilities of large language models, notably in reducing factual hallucination by leveraging external knowledge sources. However, the reliability of the retrieved information is not always guaranteed. The retrieval of irrelevant data can lead to misguided responses, and potentially causing the model to overlook its inherent knowledge, even when it possesses adequate information to address the query. Moreover, standard RALMs often struggle to assess whether they possess adequate knowledge, both intrinsic and retrieved, to provide an accurate answer. In situations where knowledge is lacking, these systems should ideally respond with "unknown" when the answer is unattainable. In response to these challenges, we introduces Chain-of-Noting (CoN), a novel approach aimed at improving the robustness of RALMs in facing noisy, irrelevant documents and in handling unknown scenarios. The core idea of CoN is to generate sequential reading notes for retrieved documents, enabling a thorough evaluation of their relevance to the given question and integrating this information to formulate the final answer. We employed ChatGPT to create training data for CoN, which was subsequently trained on an LLaMa-2 7B model. Our experiments across four open-domain QA benchmarks show that RALMs equipped with CoN significantly outperform standard RALMs. Notably, CoN achieves an average improvement of +7.9 in EM score given entirely noisy retrieved documents and +10.5 in rejection rates for real-time questions that fall outside the pre-training knowledge scope.