Spark: A System for Scientifically Creative Idea Generation
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Abstract (arXiv)
Recently, large language models (LLMs) have shown promising abilities to generate novel research ideas in science, a direction which coincides with many foundational principles in computational creativity (CC). In light of these developments, we present an idea generation system named Spark that couples retrieval-augmented idea generation using LLMs with a reviewer model named Judge trained on 600K scientific reviews from OpenReview. Our work is both a system demonstration and intended to inspire other CC researchers to explore grounding the generation and evaluation of scientific ideas within foundational CC principles. To this end, we release the annotated dataset used to train Judge, inviting other researchers to explore the use of LLMs for idea generation and creative evaluations.
Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 8 of its 21 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 25 Apr 2025.
Builds on
8 of 21 references.
References · 8
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
- 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
- 2024The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discoverycited by 1,071
- 2022Galactica: A Large Language Model for Sciencecited by 744
- 2024Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researcherscited by 363
- 2023SciMON: Scientific Inspiration Machines Optimized for Noveltycited by 179
- 2023PaperQA: Retrieval-Augmented Generative Agent for Scientific Researchcited by 149
- 2023Large Language Models for Automated Open-domain Scientific Hypotheses Discoverycited by 100
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 9.
11 papers.
- 2025AI Scientists Fail Without Strong Implementation Capabilitycited by 21
- 2026AI for Auto-Research: Roadmap & User Guidecited by 11
- 2026Measuring the Gap Between Human and LLM Research Ideascited by 10
- 2025Measuring Combinatorial Creativity in Large Language Models and Humanscited by 7
- 2026Intern-Atlas: A Methodological Evolution Graph as Research Infrastructure for AI Scientistscited by 6
- 2026Debate as Reward: A Multi-Agent Reward System for Scientific Ideation via RL Post-Trainingcited by 3
- 2026CreativityNeuro: Steering Language Model Weights to Improve Divergent Thinking and Reduce Mode Collapsecited by 2
- 2026Can LLM design high-quality experiments? A Comprehensive and Systematic Benchmark on Autonomous Experimental Designcited by 1
- 2026The Emerging AI Paper-Review Arms Race: Adversarial Co-Evolution in Scholarly Publishingcited by 1
- 2026UniCreative: Unifying Long-form Logic and Short-form Sparkle via Reference-Free Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
- 2026Positioning manuscripts in the scientific landscape with agentic AIcited by 0
- 2026Positioning manuscripts in the scientific landscape with agentic AI12 Sep 2026
- 2026The Emerging AI Paper-Review Arms Race: Adversarial Co-Evolution in Scholarly Publishing7 Sep 2026
- 2026Can LLM design high-quality experiments? A Comprehensive and Systematic Benchmark on Autonomous Experimental Design4 Aug 2026
- 2026CreativityNeuro: Steering Language Model Weights to Improve Divergent Thinking and Reduce Mode Collapse1 Jul 2026
- 2026Measuring the Gap Between Human and LLM Research Ideas1 Jul 2026
- 2026AI for Auto-Research: Roadmap & User Guide18 May 2026
- 2026Intern-Atlas: A Methodological Evolution Graph as Research Infrastructure for AI Scientists30 Apr 2026
- 2026Debate as Reward: A Multi-Agent Reward System for Scientific Ideation via RL Post-Training17 Apr 2026
- 2026UniCreative: Unifying Long-form Logic and Short-form Sparkle via Reference-Free Reinforcement Learning7 Apr 2026
- 2025Measuring Combinatorial Creativity in Large Language Models and Humans25 Sep 2025
- 2025AI Scientists Fail Without Strong Implementation Capability2 Jun 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Large Language Models for Scientific Idea Generation: A Creativity-Centered Survey
- 2024Evaluating LLMs' Divergent Thinking Capabilities for Scientific Idea Generation with Minimal Context
- 2025Graph Your Way to Inspiration: Integrating Co-Author Graphs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Model Based Scientific Idea Generation
- 2026LLM Jaggedness Unlocks Scientific Creativity
- 2025Literature-Grounded Novelty Assessment of Scientific Ideas
- 2026LigBench: A Unified and Human-Aligned Benchmark for LLM-based Research Idea Generation
- 2025CreativityPrism: A Cross-Domain Evaluation Framework for Large Language Model Creativity
- 2024Chain of Ideas: Revolutionizing Research Via Novel Idea Development with LLM Agents