# Evaluating Chunking Strategies for Retrieval-Augmented Generation on Academic Texts

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01852 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01852/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 5 of its 11 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [Ragas: Automated Evaluation of Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15217/) (2023)
- [ARES: An Automated Evaluation Framework for Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09476/) (2023)
- [Late Chunking: Contextual Chunk Embeddings Using Long-Context Embedding Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04701/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Cross-Attention Calibrated Deduplication for Retrieval-Augmented Generation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24332/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems use the question-answering capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to access information outside their parameters. We evaluate if cluster-based semantic chunking improves retrieval and answer quality compared to fixed-size and recursive chunking evaluating on long, structured academic theses using the Retrieval Augmented Generation Assessment (RAGAs) framework. RAGAs based faithfulness shows limited reliability in this setup. Performance on fixed versus document specific questions varied substantially, likely related to the formatting of documents and preprocessing. Under the tested configuration, cluster-based chunking did not outperform simpler strategies.