mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Many Heads Are Better Than One: Improved Scientific Idea Generation by A LLM-Based Multi-Agent System

arXiv 2410.09403 ↗First posted 12 Oct 2024cs.AI cs.CL cs.CVcited by 63

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Web, search, and research agents

Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancement of scientific progress requires innovative tools that can accelerate knowledge discovery. Although recent AI methods, particularly large language models (LLMs), have shown promise in tasks such as hypothesis generation and experimental design, they fall short of replicating the collaborative nature of real-world scientific practices, where diverse experts work together in teams to tackle complex problems. To address the limitations, we propose an LLM-based multi-agent system, i.e., Virtual Scientists (VirSci), designed to mimic the teamwork inherent in scientific research. VirSci organizes a team of agents to collaboratively generate, evaluate, and refine research ideas. Through comprehensive experiments, we demonstrate that this multi-agent approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method in producing novel scientific ideas. We further investigate the collaboration mechanisms that contribute to its tendency to produce ideas with higher novelty, offering valuable insights to guide future research and illuminating pathways toward building a robust system for autonomous scientific discovery. The code is available at https://github.com/open-sciencelab/Virtual-Scientists.

Key facts. Cited by 63 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Web, search, and research agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 22 of its 83 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Oct 2024.

Builds on

22 of 83 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers6 Sep

Other references · 21

  1. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  2. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  3. 2017Billion-scale similarity search with GPUscited by 2,477
  4. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,348
  5. 2024The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discoverycited by 1,002
  6. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Developmentcited by 893
  7. 2022DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generationcited by 503
  8. 2023Provable Robust Watermarking for AI-Generated Textcited by 259
  9. 2023Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology Viewcited by 221
  10. 2024Rethinking the Bounds of LLM Reasoning: Are Multi-Agent Discussions the Key?cited by 153
  11. 2024AgentScope: A Flexible yet Robust Multi-Agent Platformcited by 120
  12. 2024Can Large Language Model Agents Simulate Human Trust Behavior?cited by 62
9 more
  1. 2024CRISPR-GPT for Agentic Automation of Gene-editing Experimentscited by 56
  2. 2024Are LLMs Ready for Real-World Materials Discovery?cited by 40
  3. 2023Large Language Models for Scientific Synthesis, Inference and Explanationcited by 38
  4. 2020A Survey of Deep Learning for Scientific Discoverycited by 36
  5. 2024Large Language Models as Biomedical Hypothesis Generators: A Comprehensive Evaluationcited by 33
  6. 2024Multi-Agent Collaboration via Cross-Team Orchestrationcited by 30
  7. 2022Fine-Grained Distillation for Long Document Retrievalcited by 29
  8. 2024CHIME: LLM-Assisted Hierarchical Organization of Scientific Studies for Literature Review Supportcited by 28
  9. 2024An LLM-based Knowledge Synthesis and Scientific Reasoning Framework for Biomedical Discoverycited by 9

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 20; 2026: 40.

63 papers.

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  1. 2026EvoScientist: Towards Multi-Agent Evolving AI Scientists for End-to-End Scientific Discoverycited by 41
  2. 2025A Survey of Scientific Large Language Models: From Data Foundations to Agent Frontierscited by 34
  3. 2025Debate Only When Necessary: Adaptive Multiagent Collaboration for Efficient LLM Reasoningcited by 27
  4. 2025PiFlow: Principle-Aware Scientific Discovery with Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 25
  5. 2025Dolphin: Moving Towards Closed-loop Auto-research through Thinking, Practice, and Feedbackcited by 23
  6. 2025Creativity in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems: A Surveycited by 23
  7. 2024AIGS: Generating Science from AI-Powered Automated Falsificationcited by 17
  8. 2025Literature-Grounded Novelty Assessment of Scientific Ideascited by 17
  9. 2024Generative Adversarial Reviews: When LLMs Become the Criticcited by 12
  10. 2025Autonomous Agents for Scientific Discovery: Orchestrating Scientists, Language, Code, and Physicscited by 11
  11. 2025BILLY: Steering Large Language Models via Merging Persona Vectors for Creative Generationcited by 10
  12. 2025ReplicationBench: Can AI Agents Replicate Astrophysics Research Papers?cited by 10
38 more
  1. 2025Evolving Roles of LLMs in Scientific Innovation: Assistant, Collaborator, Scientist, and Evaluatorcited by 9
  2. 2025A Survey of AI Scientistscited by 9
  3. 2026Is this Idea Novel? An Automated Benchmark for Judgment of Research Ideascited by 8
  4. 2025Exploring Design of Multi-Agent LLM Dialogues for Research Ideationcited by 7
  5. 2026Diversity Collapse in Multi-Agent LLM Systems: Structural Coupling and Collective Failure in Open-Ended Idea Generationcited by 7
  6. 2026Measuring the Gap Between Human and LLM Research Ideascited by 7
  7. 2026Principle-Evolvable Scientific Discovery via Uncertainty Minimizationcited by 6
  8. 2026RelayCaching: Accelerating LLM Collaboration via Decoding KV Cache Reusecited by 6
  9. 2026NovBench: Evaluating Large Language Models on Academic Paper Novelty Assessmentcited by 6
  10. 2026Unlocking LLM Creativity in Science through Analogical Reasoningcited by 6
  11. 2026Autonomous Research Agents: A Survey of AI Scientists and the Verification Gapcited by 6
  12. 2025Deep Ideation: Designing LLM Agents to Generate Novel Research Ideas on Scientific Concept Networkcited by 5
  13. 2025Can AI Validate Science? Benchmarking LLMs for Accurate Scientific Claim rightarrow Evidence Reasoningcited by 4
  14. 2025InnoGym: Benchmarking the Innovation Potential of AI Agentscited by 4
  15. 2025BioVerge: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Study of Self-Evaluating Agents for Biomedical Hypothesis Generationcited by 3
  16. 2026Towards Agentic Intelligence for Materials Sciencecited by 3
  17. 2024LDC: Learning to Generate Research Idea with Dynamic Controlcited by 2
  18. 2026FlowPIE: Test-Time Scientific Idea Evolution with Flow-Guided Literature Explorationcited by 2
  19. 2026Social Dynamics as Critical Vulnerabilities that Undermine Objective Decision-Making in LLM Collectivescited by 2
  20. 2026Debate as Reward: A Multi-Agent Reward System for Scientific Ideation via RL Post-Trainingcited by 2
  21. 2026Enhancing Research Idea Generation through Combinatorial Innovation and Multi-Agent Iterative Search Strategiescited by 2
  22. 2026Evolving Idea Graphs with Learnable Edits-and-Commits for Multi-Agent Scientific Ideationcited by 2
  23. 2026EvoSci: A Bio-Inspired Multi-Agent Framework for the Evolution of Scientific Discoverycited by 2
  24. 2026Graph2Idea:Retrieval-Augmented Scientific Idea Generation with Graph-Structured Contextscited by 2
  25. 2026MECoBench: A Systematic Study of Multimodal Agent Collaboration in Embodied Environmentscited by 2
  26. 2025The Hunger Game Debate: On the Emergence of Over-Competition in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 1
  27. 2025MCCE: A Framework for Multi-LLM Collaborative Search in Discrete Spaces with Similarity-Filtered Preference Learningcited by 1
  28. 2025Eliminating Agentic Workflow for Introduction Generation with Parametric Stage Tokenscited by 1
  29. 2026Beyond Rule-Based Workflows: An Information-Flow-Orchestrated Multi-Agents Paradigm via Agent-to-Agent Communication from CORALcited by 1
  30. 2026Rank-and-Reason: Multi-Agent Collaboration Accelerates Zero-Shot Protein Mutation Predictioncited by 1
  31. 2026SciDER: Scientific Data-centric End-to-end Researchercited by 1
  32. 2026Experiment-as-Code Labs: A Declarative Stack for AI-Driven Scientific Discoverycited by 1
  33. 2026MetaAgent-X : Breaking the Ceiling of Automatic Multi-Agent Systems via End-to-End Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  34. 2026Agentic-Ideation: Sample Efficient Agentic Trajectories Synthesis for Scientific Ideation Agentscited by 1
  35. 2025Magellan: Guided MCTS for Latent Space Exploration and Novelty Generationcited by 0
  36. 2026ReMIND: Orchestrating Modular Large Language Models for Controllable Serendipity A REM-Inspired System Design for Emergent Creative Ideationcited by 0
  37. 2026INDIBATOR: Diverse and Fact-Grounded Individuality for Multi-Agent Debate in Molecular Discoverycited by 0
  38. 2026InnerPond: Fostering Inter-Self Dialogue with a Multi-Agent Approach for Introspectioncited by 0

50 most cited of 63 All 63 (JSON)

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  2. 2025Dynamic Knowledge Exchange and Dual-diversity Review: Concisely Unleashing the Potential of a Multi-Agent Research Team
  3. 2025InnovatorBench: Evaluating Agents' Ability to Conduct Innovative LLM Research
  4. 2025Idea2Plan: Exploring AI-Powered Research Planning
  5. 2025AgentRxiv: Towards Collaborative Autonomous Research
  6. 2025Agent4S: The Transformation of Research Paradigms from the Perspective of Large Language Models
  7. 2024ResearchAgent: Iterative Research Idea Generation over Scientific Literature with Large Language Models
  8. 2025The AI Scientist-v2: Workshop-Level Automated Scientific Discovery via Agentic Tree Search