Adapters Strike Back
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Adapters provide an efficient and lightweight mechanism for adapting trained transformer models to a variety of different tasks. However, they have often been found to be outperformed by other adaptation mechanisms, including low-rank adaptation. In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of adapters, their internal structure, as well as various implementation choices. We uncover pitfalls for using adapters and suggest a concrete, improved adapter architecture, called Adapter+, that not only outperforms previous adapter implementations but surpasses a number of other, more complex adaptation mechanisms in several challenging settings. Despite this, our suggested adapter is highly robust and, unlike previous work, requires little to no manual intervention when addressing a novel scenario. Adapter+ reaches state-of-the-art average accuracy on the VTAB benchmark, even without a per-task hyperparameter optimization.
Key facts. Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 46 of its 68 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Jun 2024.
Builds on
46 of 68 references.
References · 46
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 10; 2026: 3.
16 papers.
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- 2024ExPLoRA: Parameter-Efficient Extended Pre-Training to Adapt Vision Transformers under Domain Shiftscited by 16
- 2024MambaPEFT: Exploring Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Mambacited by 11
- 2025PRO-VPT: Distribution-Adaptive Visual Prompt Tuning via Prompt Relocationcited by 9
- 2025Efficient Self-Supervised Learning for Earth Observation via Dynamic Dataset Curationcited by 7
- 2025Referring Expression Comprehension for Small Objectscited by 6
- 2025On Geometry-Enhanced Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for 3D Scene Segmentationcited by 4
- 2025Efficient Adaptation of Pre-trained Vision Transformer underpinned by Approximately Orthogonal Fine-Tuning Strategycited by 3
- 2025Fantastic Features and Where to Find Them: A Probing Method to combine Features from Multiple Foundation Modelscited by 3
- 2024Multiple-Exit Tuning: Towards Inference-Efficient Adaptation for Vision Transformercited by 2
- 2025State Space Prompting via Gathering and Spreading Spatio-Temporal Information for Video Understandingcited by 2
- 2025APLA: A Simple Adaptation Method for Vision Transformerscited by 1
- 2025COLORA: Efficient Fine-Tuning for Convolutional Models with a Study Case on Optical Coherence Tomography Image Classificationcited by 1
4 more
- 2025Collaborative Low-Rank Adaptation for Pre-Trained Vision Transformerscited by 0
- 2026CUE: Concept-Aware Multi-Label Expansion to Mitigate Concept Confusion in Long-Tailed Learningcited by 0
- 2026RootQuantV2: Adapting a Vision Foundation Model for Root-Trait Regression from Minirhizotron Imagerycited by 0
- 2026Loop Dropout: Regularizing Shared Updates in Looped Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026Loop Dropout: Regularizing Shared Updates in Looped Language Models28 Sep 2026
- 2026RootQuantV2: Adapting a Vision Foundation Model for Root-Trait Regression from Minirhizotron Imagery22 Sep 2026
- 2026CUE: Concept-Aware Multi-Label Expansion to Mitigate Concept Confusion in Long-Tailed Learning2 May 2026
- 2025Collaborative Low-Rank Adaptation for Pre-Trained Vision Transformers31 Dec 2025
- 2025Fantastic Features and Where to Find Them: A Probing Method to combine Features from Multiple Foundation Models1 Dec 2025
- 2025State Space Prompting via Gathering and Spreading Spatio-Temporal Information for Video Understanding14 Oct 2025
- 2025Referring Expression Comprehension for Small Objects4 Oct 2025
- 2025Efficient Adaptation of Pre-trained Vision Transformer underpinned by Approximately Orthogonal Fine-Tuning Strategy17 Jul 2025
- 2025On Geometry-Enhanced Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for 3D Scene Segmentation28 May 2025
- 2025COLORA: Efficient Fine-Tuning for Convolutional Models with a Study Case on Optical Coherence Tomography Image Classification23 May 2025
- 2025Efficient Self-Supervised Learning for Earth Observation via Dynamic Dataset Curation9 Apr 2025
- 2025APLA: A Simple Adaptation Method for Vision Transformers14 Mar 2025
4 more
- 2025PRO-VPT: Distribution-Adaptive Visual Prompt Tuning via Prompt Relocation10 Mar 2025
- 2024MambaPEFT: Exploring Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Mamba6 Nov 2024
- 2024Multiple-Exit Tuning: Towards Inference-Efficient Adaptation for Vision Transformer21 Sep 2024
- 2024ExPLoRA: Parameter-Efficient Extended Pre-Training to Adapt Vision Transformers under Domain Shifts16 Jun 2024
- 2024ExPLoRA: Parameter-Efficient Extended Pre-Training to Adapt Vision Transformers under Domain Shiftscited by 16
- 2025PRO-VPT: Distribution-Adaptive Visual Prompt Tuning via Prompt Relocationcited by 9
- 2025Efficient Self-Supervised Learning for Earth Observation via Dynamic Dataset Curationcited by 7
- 2025Referring Expression Comprehension for Small Objectscited by 6
- 2025On Geometry-Enhanced Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for 3D Scene Segmentationcited by 4
- 2025Efficient Adaptation of Pre-trained Vision Transformer underpinned by Approximately Orthogonal Fine-Tuning Strategycited by 3
- 2025Fantastic Features and Where to Find Them: A Probing Method to combine Features from Multiple Foundation Modelscited by 3
- 2025State Space Prompting via Gathering and Spreading Spatio-Temporal Information for Video Understandingcited by 2
- 2025APLA: A Simple Adaptation Method for Vision Transformerscited by 1
- 2025COLORA: Efficient Fine-Tuning for Convolutional Models with a Study Case on Optical Coherence Tomography Image Classificationcited by 1
- 2025Collaborative Low-Rank Adaptation for Pre-Trained Vision Transformerscited by 0
- 2026CUE: Concept-Aware Multi-Label Expansion to Mitigate Concept Confusion in Long-Tailed Learningcited by 0
12 most cited of 14 All 14 (JSON)
- 2026Loop Dropout: Regularizing Shared Updates in Looped Language Models28 Sep 2026
- 2026RootQuantV2: Adapting a Vision Foundation Model for Root-Trait Regression from Minirhizotron Imagery22 Sep 2026
- 2026CUE: Concept-Aware Multi-Label Expansion to Mitigate Concept Confusion in Long-Tailed Learning2 May 2026
- 2025Collaborative Low-Rank Adaptation for Pre-Trained Vision Transformers31 Dec 2025
- 2025Fantastic Features and Where to Find Them: A Probing Method to combine Features from Multiple Foundation Models1 Dec 2025
- 2025State Space Prompting via Gathering and Spreading Spatio-Temporal Information for Video Understanding14 Oct 2025
- 2025Referring Expression Comprehension for Small Objects4 Oct 2025
- 2025Efficient Adaptation of Pre-trained Vision Transformer underpinned by Approximately Orthogonal Fine-Tuning Strategy17 Jul 2025
- 2025On Geometry-Enhanced Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for 3D Scene Segmentation28 May 2025
- 2025COLORA: Efficient Fine-Tuning for Convolutional Models with a Study Case on Optical Coherence Tomography Image Classification23 May 2025
- 2025Efficient Self-Supervised Learning for Earth Observation via Dynamic Dataset Curation9 Apr 2025
- 2025APLA: A Simple Adaptation Method for Vision Transformers14 Mar 2025
12 newest of 14 All 14 (JSON)