# BRIDGE: Benchmark for multi-hop Reasoning In long multimodal Documents with Grounded Evidence

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07931 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07931/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 11 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Knowledge- and tool-augmented reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/knowledge-and-tool-augmented-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [DocVQA: A Dataset for VQA on Document Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00398/) (2020)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [SPIQA: A Dataset for Multimodal Question Answering on Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09413/) (2024)
- [FanOutQA: A Multi-Hop, Multi-Document Question Answering Benchmark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14116/) (2024)
- [Cofca: A Step-Wise Counterfactual Multi-hop QA benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11924/) (2024)
- [ViDoRe V3: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Retrieval Augmented Generation in Complex Real-World Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08620/) (2026)
- [Towards Robust Temporal Reasoning of Large Language Models via a Multi-Hop QA Dataset and Pseudo-Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09821/) (2023)
- [Form-NLU: Dataset for the Form Natural Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01577/) (2023)
- [BioHopR: A Benchmark for Multi-Hop, Multi-Answer Reasoning in Biomedical Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22240/) (2025)
- [MultiHoax: A Dataset of Multi-hop False-Premise Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00264/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [DocScope: Benchmarking Verifiable Reasoning for Trustworthy Long-Document Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08888/) (2026)
- [WildTrace: Benchmarking Natural Evidence Trails in Long-Context Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09328/) (2026)
- [TopoGraphRAG-Bench: Evaluating Multimodal GraphRAG on Layout-Grounded Evidence Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09360/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-hop question answering (QA) is widely used to evaluate the reasoning capabilities of large language models, yet most benchmarks focus on final answer correctness and overlook intermediate reasoning, especially in long multimodal documents. We introduce BRIDGE, a benchmark for multi-hop reasoning over long scientific papers that require integrating evidence across text, tables, and figures. The dataset supports both chain-like and fan-out structures and provides explicit multi-hop reasoning annotations for step-level evaluation beyond answer accuracy. Experiments with state-of-the-art LLMs and multimodal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems reveal systematic deficiencies in evidence aggregation and grounding that remain hidden under conventional answer-only evaluation. BRIDGE provides a targeted testbed for diagnosing reasoning failures in long multimodal documents.