SPAR: Scholar Paper Retrieval with LLM-based Agents for Enhanced
  Academic Search
Authors: name: Xiaofeng Shi; name: Yuduo Li; name: Qian Kou; name: Longbin Yu; name: Jinxin Xie; name: Hua Zhou
Published: 2025-07-21 05:06:53

Abstract: Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have opened new opportunities
for academic literature retrieval. However, existing systems often rely on
rigid pipelines and exhibit limited reasoning capabilities. We introduce SPAR,
a multi-agent framework that incorporates RefChain-based query decomposition
and query evolution to enable more flexible and effective search. To facilitate
systematic evaluation, we also construct SPARBench, a challenging benchmark
with expert-annotated relevance labels. Experimental results demonstrate that
SPAR substantially outperforms strong baselines, achieving up to +56% F1 on
AutoScholar and +23% F1 on SPARBench over the best-performing baseline.
Together, SPAR and SPARBench provide a scalable, interpretable, and
high-performing foundation for advancing research in scholarly retrieval. Code
and data will be available at: https://github.com/xiaofengShi/SPAR