Uncertainty Quantification for Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning
Abstract
Retrieval-augmented reasoning (RAR) is a recent evolution of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) that employs multiple reasoning steps for retrieval and generation. While effective for some complex queries, RAR remains vulnerable to errors and misleading outputs. Uncertainty quantification (UQ) offers methods to estimate the confidence of systems' outputs. These methods, however, often handle simple queries with no retrieval or single-step retrieval, without properly handling RAR setup. Accurate estimation of UQ for RAR requires accounting for all sources of uncertainty, including those arising from retrieval and generation. In this paper, we account for these sources and introduce Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning Consistency (R2C), a novel UQ method for RAR. The core idea of R2C is to perturb the multi-step reasoning process by applying various actions to reasoning steps. These perturbations alter the retriever's input, which shifts its output and consequently modifies the generator's input at the next step. Through this iterative feedback loop, the retriever and generator continuously reshape each other's inputs, enabling us to capture uncertainty arising from both components. Experiments on five popular RAR systems across diverse QA datasets show that R2C improves AUROC by over 5% on average compared to the state-of-the-art UQ baselines. Extrinsic evaluations using R2C as an external signal further confirm its effectiveness for two downstream tasks: in the Abstention task, it achieves ~5% gains in both F1Abstain and AccAbstain; in Model Selection, it improves exact match by ~7% over single models and ~3% over selection methods. Code is available on https://github.com/HeydarSoudani/R2C.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jinheon Baek | 45 | 74 Efficient Real-time Refinement of Language Model Text Generation (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 74 Adaptive-RAG: Learning to Adapt Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models through Question Complexity (2024) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 45 Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning Distillation for Small Language Models in Knowledge-Intensive Tasks (2023) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA |
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| 2 | Qinggang Zhang | 45 | 74 FaithfulRAG: Fact-Level Conflict Modeling for Context-Faithful Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 72 You Don't Need Pre-Built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 46 Cost-efficient Knowledge-based Question Answering with Large Language Models (2024) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Zhijing Wu 0001 | 46 |
Area-chair candidates (7)
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 | 46 | 15 papers | |
| Zhijing Wu 0001 assigned | 46 | 9 papers | |
| Hongjin Qian | 44 | 12 papers | |
| Xiaoxue Zang | 43 | 4 papers | |
| Jun Xu 0001 | 40 | 2 papers | |
| Kam-Fai Wong | 40 | 6 papers | |
| Dacheng Tao | 37 | 5 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Xingyu Tan 0001 | 50 | 3 | 58 HydraRAG: Structured Cross-Source Enhanced Large Language Model Reasoning (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning 58 MemoTime: Memory-Augmented Temporal Knowledge Graph Enhanced Large Language Model Reasoning (2026) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
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| 4 | Jinheon Baek assigned | 45 | 3 | 74 Efficient Real-time Refinement of Language Model Text Generation (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 74 Adaptive-RAG: Learning to Adapt Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models through Question Complexity (2024) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
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| 5 | Qinggang Zhang assigned | 45 | 3 | 74 FaithfulRAG: Fact-Level Conflict Modeling for Context-Faithful Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 72 You Don't Need Pre-Built Graphs for RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation with Adaptive Reasoning Structures (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
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| 6 | Shu Zhou 0002 | 44 | 3 | 70 SCORE-RAG: Self-Correcting Exploration-Exploitation Retrieval for Multi-hop Question Answering (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 69 Calibrating Uncertainty with Cross-Model Consistency for LLM Hallucination Mitigation (2026) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness |
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| 7 | Jing Liu 0022 | 44 | 3 | 75 Reinforced Informativeness Optimization for Long-Form Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2026) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement 74 Unveiling Knowledge Utilization Mechanisms in LLM-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness |
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| 10 | Weiwei Sun 0001 | 42 | 3 | 74 Contrastive Learning Reduces Hallucination in Conversations (2023) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 50 Direct Retrieval-augmented Optimization: Synergizing Knowledge Selection and Language Models (2026) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement |
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| 11 | Yujia Zhou 0002 | 42 | 3 | 74 Robust Fine-tuning for Retrieval Augmented Generation against Retrieval Defects (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 47 RetroLLM: Empowering Large Language Models to Retrieve Fine-grained Evidence within Generation (2025) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement |
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| 12 | Wenyu Huang | 42 | 3 | 45 Masking in Multi-hop QA: An Analysis of How Language Models Perform with Context Permutation (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA 45 Prompting large language models with knowledge graphs for question answering involving long-tail facts (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
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| 13 | Di Wu 0054 | 42 | 3 | 74 Synchronous Faithfulness Monitoring for Trustworthy Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2024) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 44 LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memory (2025) Conversational Search and Retrieval |
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| 14 | Yu-An Liu 0028 | 41 | 3 | 74 AdversarialCoT: Single-Document Retrieval Poisoning for LLM Reasoning (2026) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 74 Compete to Complete: Co-opetition Adversarial Learning for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (2026) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness |
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| 15 | Yu Gu 0016 | 41 | 3 | 58 HippoRAG: Neurobiologically Inspired Long-Term Memory for Large Language Models (2024) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning 46 Few-shot In-context Learning on Knowledge Base Question Answering (2023) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
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| 16 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 40 | 3 | 74 ReDeEP: Detecting Hallucination in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Mechanistic Interpretability (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 74 LargePiG for Hallucination-Free Query Generation: Your Large Language Model is Secretly a Pointer Generator (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness |
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| 18 | Farzad Shami | 40 | 3 | 40 From Single to Multi-agent Reasoning: Advancing GeneGPT for Genomics QA (2026) Retrieval-Augmented and Open-Domain QA 39 Fact Verification in Knowledge Graphs Using LLMs (2025) KG-Augmented LLM Reasoning |
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| 19 | Ori Yoran | 40 | 3 | 61 Making Retrieval-Augmented Language Models Robust to Irrelevant Context (2024) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement 47 Answering Questions by Meta-Reasoning over Multiple Chains of Thought (2023) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 20 | Xi Ye 0003 | 40 | 3 | 74 Effective Large Language Model Adaptation for Improved Grounding and Citation Generation (2024) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 45 Connecting Attributions and QA Model Behavior on Realistic Counterfactuals (2021) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
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| 22 | Kaixin Ma | 40 | 3 | 75 Chain-of-Note: Enhancing Robustness in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models (2024) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement 44 Dense X Retrieval: What Retrieval Granularity Should We Use? (2024) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement |
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| 23 | Idan Szpektor | 40 | 3 | 72 DisentQA: Disentangling Parametric and Contextual Knowledge with Counterfactual Question Answering (2023) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 41 On the Robustness of Dialogue History Representation in Conversational Question Answering: A Comprehensive Study and a New Prompt-based Method (2023) Conversational Search and Retrieval |
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| 24 | Jiapu Wang | 40 | 3 | 60 Decomposing and Revising What Language Models Generate (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 60 Atomic Fact Decomposition Helps Attributed Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
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| 25 | Adam Jatowt COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 45 Wrong Answers Can Also Be Useful: PlausibleQA - A Large-Scale QA Dataset with Answer Plausibility Scores (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA 45 Inferential Question Answering (2026) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
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| 26 | Chen Zhao 0013 | 39 | 3 | 60 SportReason: Evaluating Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning across Tables and Text for Sports Question Answering (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 45 TaPERA: Enhancing Faithfulness and Interpretability in Long-Form Table QA by Content Planning and Execution-based Reasoning (2024) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
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| 27 | Shuaiqiang Wang | 38 | 3 | 68 Thinking Forward and Backward: Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Retrieval-Augmented Reasoning (2026) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 67 Improving Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (2025) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning |
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| 28 | Falk Scholer COI: co-author | 38 | 3 | 44 WikiHowQA: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multi-Document Non-Factoid Question Answering (2023) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA 42 UQV100: A Test Collection with Query Variability (2016) Test Collection Construction and Pooling |
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| 29 | Jialong Wu 0007 | 38 | 3 | 43 WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversal (2025) Agentic and Deep Search RAG 39 OmniThink: Expanding Knowledge Boundaries in Machine Writing through Thinking (2025) Deep Research and Report Generation |
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| 30 | Archiki Prasad | 38 | 3 | 74 AdaCAD: Adaptively Decoding to Balance Conflicts between Contextual and Parametric Knowledge (2025) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 41 PRInTS: Reward Modeling for Long-Horizon Information Seeking (2026) Reward Modeling and Process Supervision |
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| 31 | Wonduk Seo | 38 | 3 | 38 A New Query Expansion Approach for Enhancing Information Retrieval via Agent-Mediated Dialogic Inquiry (2026) Query Reformulation and Expansion 38 Automated Visualization Code Synthesis via Multi-path Reasoning and Feedback-Driven Optimizations (2026) Reasoning Evaluation and Benchmarks |
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| 32 | Negar Arabzadeh | 38 | 3 | 47 Can QPP Choose the Right Query variant? Evaluating Query Variant Selection for RAG Pipelines (2026) Evidence Selection and Context Refinement 42 MS MARCO Chameleons: Challenging the MS MARCO Leaderboard with Extremely Obstinate Queries (2021) Test Collection Construction and Pooling |
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| 33 | Qingyi Si | 38 | 3 | 74 Breaking the Trade-Off Between Faithfulness and Expressiveness for Large Language Models (2026) Knowledge Conflict and Faithfulness 43 Are Large Language Models Table-based Fact-Checkers? (2024) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification |
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| 34 | Xinying Qian | 38 | 3 | 57 TimeR⁴ : Time-aware Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models for Temporal Knowledge Graph Question Answering (2024) Multi-Hop and Iterative Retrieval Reasoning 45 Beyond Timestamps: Bridging Forward and Backward Reasoning in Temporal Numerical and Relational Understanding (2026) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA |
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| 35 | Armin Toroghi | 38 | 3 | 41 CommonWhy: A Dataset for Evaluating Entity-Based Causal Commonsense Reasoning in Large Language Models (2026) Knowledge Graph Question Answering 39 Bayesian Inference with Complex Knowledge Graph Evidence (2024) Knowledge Graph Question Answering |
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| 36 | Qisheng Hu | 37 | 3 | 45 Just What You Desire: Constrained Timeline Summarization with Self-Reflection for Enhanced Relevance (2025) Multi-hop and Complex Reasoning QA 36 Decomposition Dilemmas: Does Claim Decomposition Boost or Burden Fact-Checking Performance? (2025) Automated Fact Checking and Claim Verification |