# RAG-RLRC-LaySum at BioLaySumm: Integrating Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Readability Control for Layman Summarization of Biomedical Texts

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13179 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13179/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical and biomedical RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 22 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2024.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Medical and biomedical RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/medical-and-biomedical-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- [Longformer: The Long-Document Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05150/) (2020)
- [LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08239/) (2022)
- [ColBERT: Efficient and Effective Passage Search via Contextualized Late Interaction over BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12832/) (2020)
- [M3-Embedding: Multi-Linguality, Multi-Functionality, Multi-Granularity Text Embeddings Through Self-Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03216/) (2024)
- [On Faithfulness and Factuality in Abstractive Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00661/) (2020)
- [SummaC: Re-Visiting NLI-based Models for Inconsistency Detection in Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09525/) (2021)
- [AlignScore: Evaluating Factual Consistency with a Unified Alignment Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16739/) (2023)
- [LinkBERT: Pretraining Language Models with Document Links](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15827/) (2022)
- [Llama2Vec: Unsupervised Adaptation of Large Language Models for Dense Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15503/) (2023)
- [GO FIGURE: A Meta Evaluation of Factuality in Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12834/) (2020)
- [Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning Distillation for Small Language Models in Knowledge-Intensive Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18395/) (2023)
- [Pyserini: An Easy-to-Use Python Toolkit to Support Replicable IR Research with Sparse and Dense Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10073/) (2021)
- [Making Science Simple: Corpora for the Lay Summarisation of Scientific Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09932/) (2022)
- [LENS: A Learnable Evaluation Metric for Text Simplification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09739/) (2022)
- [Generating Summaries with Controllable Readability Levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10623/) (2023)
- [Extracting Symptoms and their Status from Clinical Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02239/) (2019)
- [A Comparative Study on Enhancing Prediction in Social Network Advertisement through Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13812/) (2024)
- [InfuserKI: Enhancing Large Language Models with Knowledge Graphs via Infuser-Guided Knowledge Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11441/) (2024)
- [Cross-Task Multi-Branch Vision Transformer for Facial Expression and Mask Wearing Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14606/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [From Mind to Machine: The Rise of Manus AI as a Fully Autonomous Digital Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02024/) (2025)
- [GraphRAG under Fire](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14050/) (2025)
- [Overview of the BioLaySumm 2024 Shared Task on the Lay Summarization of Biomedical Research Articles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08566/) (2024)
- [Harnessing LLMs for API Interactions: A Framework for Classification and Synthetic Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11703/) (2024)
- [Cloud-Based AI Systems: Leveraging Large Language Models for Intelligent Fault Detection and Autonomous Self-Healing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11743/) (2025)
- [Data Augmentation Through Random Style Replacement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10563/) (2025)
- [Cross-Cloud Data Privacy Protection: Optimizing Collaborative Mechanisms of AI Systems by Integrating Federated Learning and LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13292/) (2025)
- [User Behavior Analysis in Privacy Protection with Large Language Models: A Study on Privacy Preferences with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06305/) (2025)
- [Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Out-of-Distribution Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11105/) (2024)
- [Evaluating the Evaluators: Are readability metrics good measures of readability?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19221/) (2025)
- [Research on Cloud Platform Network Traffic Monitoring and Anomaly Detection System based on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17807/) (2025)
- [Instruction Tuning and CoT Prompting for Contextual Medical QA with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12182/) (2025)
- [Learning an Efficient Optimizer via Hybrid-Policy Sub-Trajectory Balance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00543/) (2025)
- [A Review of Electromagnetic Elimination Methods for low-field portable MRI scanner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17804/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Exchange Rate Forecasting with Explainable Deep Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19241/) (2024)
- [GPTDrawer: Enhancing Visual Synthesis through ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10429/) (2024)
- [DeepRAG: Integrating Hierarchical Reasoning and Process Supervision for Biomedical Multi-Hop QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00671/) (2025)
- [Anomaly Detection and Early Warning Mechanism for Intelligent Monitoring Systems in Multi-Cloud Environments Based on LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07407/) (2025)
- [Federated Learning-Based Data Collaboration Method for Enhancing Edge Cloud AI System Security Using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18087/) (2025)
- [MoK-RAG: Mixture of Knowledge Paths Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Embodied AI Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13882/) (2025)
- [An Intelligent Fault Self-Healing Mechanism for Cloud AI Systems via Integration of Large Language Models and Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07411/) (2025)
- [Leveraging Large Language Model for Intelligent Log Processing and Autonomous Debugging in Cloud AI Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17900/) (2025)
- [Slang Context-based Inference Enhancement via Greedy Search-Guided Chain-of-Thought Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13230/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces the RAG-RLRC-LaySum framework, designed to make complex biomedical research understandable to laymen through advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Our Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) solution, enhanced by a reranking method, utilizes multiple knowledge sources to ensure the precision and pertinence of lay summaries. Additionally, our Reinforcement Learning for Readability Control (RLRC) strategy improves readability, making scientific content comprehensible to non-specialists. Evaluations using the publicly accessible PLOS and eLife datasets show that our methods surpass Plain Gemini model, demonstrating a 20% increase in readability scores, a 15% improvement in ROUGE-2 relevance scores, and a 10% enhancement in factual accuracy. The RAG-RLRC-LaySum framework effectively democratizes scientific knowledge, enhancing public engagement with biomedical discoveries.