# Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for LLM-based Recommendation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02226 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02226/

## Key facts

- Cited by 57 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RAG for recommendation, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 35 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jan 2025.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [RAG for recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/rag/rag-for-recommendation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [Qwen2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10671/) (2024)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [LightGCN: Simplifying and Powering Graph Convolution Network for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.02126/) (2020)
- [Generalization through Memorization: Nearest Neighbor Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00172/) (2019)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Social Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07243/) (2019)
- [In-Context Retrieval-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00083/) (2023)
- [Masked Label Prediction: Unified Message Passing Model for Semi-Supervised Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03509/) (2020)
- [Recommendation as Language Processing (RLP): A Unified Pretrain, Personalized Prompt & Predict Paradigm (P5)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13366/) (2022)
- [AmbigQA: Answering Ambiguous Open-domain Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10645/) (2020)
- [TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00447/) (2023)
- [Reasoning on Graphs: Faithful and Interpretable Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01061/) (2023)
- [Recommender Systems in the Era of Large Language Models (LLMs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02046/) (2023)
- [LLMRec: Large Language Models with Graph Augmentation for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00423/) (2023)
- [GNN-RAG: Graph Neural Retrieval for Large Language Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20139/) (2024)
- [Knowledge-Augmented Language Model Prompting for Zero-Shot Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04136/) (2023)
- [AgentCF: Collaborative Learning with Autonomous Language Agents for Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09233/) (2023)
- [CoLLM: Integrating Collaborative Embeddings into Large Language Models for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.19488/) (2023)
- [Knowledge-Driven CoT: Exploring Faithful Reasoning in LLMs for Knowledge-intensive Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13259/) (2023)
- [Empowering Molecule Discovery for Molecule-Caption Translation with Large Language Models: A ChatGPT Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06615/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [A Survey of WebAgents: Towards Next-Generation AI Agents for Web Automation with Large Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23350/) (2025)
- [Towards Next-Generation Recommender Systems: A Benchmark for Personalized Recommendation Assistant with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09382/) (2025)
- [VistaWise: Building Cost-Effective Agent with Cross-Modal Knowledge Graph for Minecraft](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18722/) (2025)
- [mKG-RAG: Leveraging Multimodal Knowledge Graphs in Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-intensive VQA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05318/) (2025)
- [Task-Aware LLM Routing with Multi-Level Task-Profile-Guided Data Synthesis for Cold-Start Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09377/) (2026)
- [Diffusion Generative Recommendation with Continuous Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12007/) (2025)
- [Toward Reliable Scientific Hypothesis Generation: Evaluating Truthfulness and Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14599/) (2025)
- [Align-GRAG: Anchor and Rationale Guided Dual Alignment for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16237/) (2025)
- [MR.Rec: Synergizing Memory and Reasoning for Personalized Recommendation Assistant with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14629/) (2025)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Purifier for Robust LLM-Empowered Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02458/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Large Language Models in Multimodal Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09777/) (2025)
- [ScienceDB AI: An LLM-Driven Agentic Recommender System for Large-Scale Scientific Data Sharing Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01118/) (2026)
- [Exposing Privacy Risks in Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17222/) (2025)
- [Efficient and Transferable Agentic Knowledge Graph RAG via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26383/) (2025)
- [Graph Foundation Models for Recommendation: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08346/) (2025)
- [HealthGenie: Empowering Users with Healthy Dietary Guidance through Knowledge Graph and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14594/) (2025)
- [Autonomous Information Seeking: A Roadmap for Agentic Recommender Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04433/) (2026)
- [RAG-VisualRec: An Open Resource for Vision- and Text-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation in Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20817/) (2025)
- [AgentDR: Dynamic Recommendation with Implicit Item-Item Relations via LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.05598/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Molecular Property Predictions by Learning from Bond Modelling and Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00568/) (2026)
- [ReRec: Reasoning-Augmented LLM-based Recommendation Assistant via Reinforcement Fine-tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07851/) (2026)
- [Learning to Shop Like Humans: A Review-driven Retrieval-Augmented Recommendation Framework with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00698/) (2025)
- [WebRec: Enhancing LLM-based Recommendations with Attention-guided RAG from Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14182/) (2025)
- [ItemRAG: Item-Based Retrieval-Augmented Generation for LLM-Based Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15141/) (2025)
- [Cooperative Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Question Answering: Mutual Information Exchange and Ranking by Contrasting Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.10422/) (2025)
- [Mixture-of-Experts Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Multi-Agent LLM-based Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28175/) (2026)
- [Effectiveness of LLMs in Temporal User Profiling for Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00176/) (2025)
- [MARC: Multimodal and Multi-Task Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Cold-Start Recommender System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08181/) (2025)
- [GPU-Accelerated ANNS: Quantized for Speed, Built for Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07048/) (2026)
- [Evolving Beyond Snapshots: Harmonizing Structure and Sequence via Entity State Tuning for Temporal Knowledge Graph Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12389/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recommender systems have become increasingly vital in our daily lives, helping to alleviate the problem of information overload across various user-oriented online services. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has yielded remarkable achievements, demonstrating their potential for the development of next-generation recommender systems. Despite these advancements, LLM-based recommender systems face inherent limitations stemming from their LLM backbones, particularly issues of hallucinations and the lack of up-to-date and domain-specific knowledge. Recently, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has garnered significant attention for addressing these limitations by leveraging external knowledge sources to enhance the understanding and generation of LLMs. However, vanilla RAG methods often introduce noise and neglect structural relationships in knowledge, limiting their effectiveness in LLM-based recommendations. To address these limitations, we propose to retrieve high-quality and up-to-date structure information from the knowledge graph (KG) to augment recommendations. Specifically, our approach develops a retrieval-augmented framework, termed K-RagRec, that facilitates the recommendation generation process by incorporating structure information from the external KG. Extensive experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.