# RAGLAB: A Modular and Research-Oriented Unified Framework for Retrieval-Augmented Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11381 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11381/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Conversational and speech RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 24 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Aug 2024.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Conversational and speech RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/conversational-and-speech-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03300/) (2020)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [QLoRA: Efficient Finetuning of Quantized LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14314/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [FActScore: Fine-grained Atomic Evaluation of Factual Precision in Long Form Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14251/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Dense Information Retrieval with Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09118/) (2021)
- [When Not to Trust Language Models: Investigating Effectiveness of Parametric and Non-Parametric Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10511/) (2022)
- [Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03350/) (2022)
- [Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00051/) (2017)
- [Did Aristotle Use a Laptop? A Question Answering Benchmark with Implicit Reasoning Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02235/) (2021)
- [Enabling Large Language Models to Generate Text with Citations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14627/) (2023)
- [ColBERTv2: Effective and Efficient Retrieval via Lightweight Late Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01488/) (2021)
- [Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models with Iterative Retrieval-Generation Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15294/) (2023)
- [ASQA: Factoid Questions Meet Long-Form Answers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06092/) (2022)
- [FlashRAG: A Modular Toolkit for Efficient Retrieval-Augmented Generation Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13576/) (2024)
- [RQ-RAG: Learning to Refine Queries for Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00610/) (2024)
- [BlendFilter: Advancing Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models via Query Generation Blending and Knowledge Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11129/) (2024)
- [LocalRQA: From Generating Data to Locally Training, Testing, and Deploying Retrieval-Augmented QA Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00982/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01990/) (2025)
- [UltraRAG: A Modular and Automated Toolkit for Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08761/) (2025)
- [OpenRAG: Optimizing RAG End-to-End via In-Context Retrieval Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08398/) (2025)
- [XRAG: eXamining the Core -- Benchmarking Foundational Components in Advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15529/) (2024)
- [TrustRAG: An Information Assistant with Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13719/) (2025)
- [Optimizing Retrieval for RAG via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24652/) (2025)
- [RAGe: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation Evaluation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27445/) (2026)
- [Mapping the RAG Landscape: A Four Axis Taxonomy of Efficiency, Defense, Interactivity, and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01936/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate human-level capabilities in dialogue, reasoning, and knowledge retention. However, even the most advanced LLMs face challenges such as hallucinations and real-time updating of their knowledge. Current research addresses this bottleneck by equipping LLMs with external knowledge, a technique known as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). However, two key issues constrained the development of RAG. First, there is a growing lack of comprehensive and fair comparisons between novel RAG algorithms. Second, open-source tools such as LlamaIndex and LangChain employ high-level abstractions, which results in a lack of transparency and limits the ability to develop novel algorithms and evaluation metrics. To close this gap, we introduce RAGLAB, a modular and research-oriented open-source library. RAGLAB reproduces 6 existing algorithms and provides a comprehensive ecosystem for investigating RAG algorithms. Leveraging RAGLAB, we conduct a fair comparison of 6 RAG algorithms across 10 benchmarks. With RAGLAB, researchers can efficiently compare the performance of various algorithms and develop novel algorithms.