A Parametric Memory Head for Continual Generative Retrieval
Abstract
Generative information retrieval (GenIR) consolidates retrieval into a single neural model that decodes document identifiers (docids) directly from queries. While this model-as-index paradigm offers architectural simplicity, it is poorly suited to dynamic document collections. Unlike modular systems, where indexes are easily updated, GenIR's knowledge is parametrically encoded in its weights; consequently, standard adaptation methods such as full and parameter-efficient fine-tuning can induce catastrophic forgetting. We show that sequential adaptation improves retrieval on newly added documents but substantially degrades performance on earlier slices, exposing a pronounced stability-plasticity trade-off. To address this, we propose post-adaptation memory tuning (PAMT), a memory-only stabilization stage that augments an adapted model with a modular parametric memory head (PMH). PAMT freezes the backbone and attaches a product-key memory with fixed addressing. During prefix-trie constrained decoding, decoder hidden states sparsely query PMH to produce residual corrections in hidden space; these corrections are mapped to score adjustments via the frozen output embedding matrix, computed only over trie-valid tokens. This guides docid generation while keeping routing and backbone parameters fixed. To limit cross-slice interference, PAMT updates only a fixed budget of memory values selected using decoding-time access statistics, prioritizing entries frequently activated by the current slice and rarely used in prior sessions. Experiments on MS MARCO and Natural Questions under sequential, disjoint corpus increments show that PAMT substantially improves retention on earlier slices with minimal impact on retrieval performance for newly added documents, while modifying only a sparse subset of memory values per session.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yujia Zhou 0002 | 57 | 79 Generative Retrieval via Term Set Generation (2024) Generative Retrieval 79 NOVO: Learnable and Interpretable Document Identifiers for Model-Based IR (2023) Generative Retrieval 79 WebUltron: An Ultimate Retriever on Webpages Under the Model-Centric Paradigm (2024) Generative Retrieval |
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| 2 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 49 | 79 Exploring Training and Inference Scaling Laws in Generative Retrieval (2025) Generative Retrieval 79 Multiview Identifiers Enhanced Generative Retrieval (2023) Generative Retrieval 65 Learning to Rank in Generative Retrieval (2024) Generative Retrieval |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 | 50 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Xiaoxi Li 0005 assigned | 50 | 15 papers | |
| Xiaoxue Zang | 41 | 4 papers | |
| Jun Xu 0001 COI: co-author | 41 | 2 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 39 | 11 papers | |
| Chenyan Xiong | 38 | 15 papers | |
| Fernando Diaz 0001 COI: co-author | 38 | 12 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ruqing Zhang 0001 COI: co-author | 67 | 3 | 79 Continual Learning for Generative Retrieval over Dynamic Corpora (2023) Generative Retrieval 79 Generative Retrieval Meets Multi-Graded Relevance (2024) Generative Retrieval |
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| 2 | Yujia Zhou 0002 assigned | 57 | 3 | 79 Generative Retrieval via Term Set Generation (2024) Generative Retrieval 79 NOVO: Learnable and Interpretable Document Identifiers for Model-Based IR (2023) Generative Retrieval |
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| 4 | Yongqi Li 0001 assigned | 49 | 3 | 79 Exploring Training and Inference Scaling Laws in Generative Retrieval (2025) Generative Retrieval 79 Multiview Identifiers Enhanced Generative Retrieval (2023) Generative Retrieval |
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| 5 | Weiwei Sun 0001 COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 79 Replication and Exploration of Generative Retrieval over Dynamic Corpora (2025) Generative Retrieval 79 Learning to Tokenize for Generative Retrieval (2023) Generative Retrieval |
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| 6 | Xiao Wang 0043 | 45 | 3 | 45 Retrieve, Rerank, Answer, Experiment: Hands-On IR Research with PyTerrier (2026) Retrieval Toolkits and Reproducibility 45 Neural Pseudo-Relevance Feedback Models for Sparse and Dense Retrieval (2022) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 7 | Xinyu Ma 0001 COI: co-author | 44 | 3 | 79 Model Editing for New Document Integration in Generative Information Retrieval (2026) Generative Retrieval 71 Replication and Exploration of Generative Retrieval over Dynamic Corpora (2025) Generative Retrieval |
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| 8 | Negar Arabzadeh COI: co-author | 43 | 3 | 46 Enhanced Retrieval Effectiveness through Selective Query Generation (2024) Query Reformulation and Expansion 46 ReFormeR: Learning and Applying Explicit Query Reformulation Patterns (2026) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 9 | Xueguang Ma | 42 | 3 | 45 Improving Query Representations for Dense Retrieval with Pseudo Relevance Feedback: A Reproducibility Study (2022) Query Reformulation and Expansion 44 Document Expansion Baselines and Learned Sparse Lexical Representations for MS MARCO V1 and V2 (2022) Retrieval Toolkits and Reproducibility |
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| 10 | Antonio Mallia | 42 | 3 | 45 Feature Extraction for Large-Scale Text Collections (2020) Retrieval Toolkits and Reproducibility 45 Unveiling DIME: Reproducibility, Generalizability, and Formal Analysis of Dimension Importance Estimation for Dense Retrieval (2025) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 11 | Tetsuya Sakai | 42 | 3 | 46 Flexible Pseudo-Relevance Feedback Using Optimization Tables (2001) Query Reformulation and Expansion 42 Diversification as Risk Minimization (2026) Evaluation Metrics and User Models |
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| 12 | Yang Song 0008 | 41 | 3 | 100 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval 60 GenSAR: Unifying Balanced Search and Recommendation with Generative Retrieval (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 15 | Gustavo Penha | 41 | 3 | 60 Bridging Search and Recommendation in Generative Retrieval: Does One Task Help the Other? (2024) Recommendation with Search and Ranking 60 Semantic IDs for Joint Generative Search and Recommendation (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 16 | Yu-An Liu 0028 COI: co-author | 41 | 3 | 69 On the Robustness of Generative Information Retrieval Models: An Out-of-Distribution Perspective (2025) Generative Retrieval 41 Robust Neural Information Retrieval: An Adversarial and Out-of-Distribution Perspective (2026) Robustness and Adversarial IR |
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| 17 | Shengyao Zhuang | 40 | 3 | 45 Revisiting Document Expansion and Filtering for Effective First-Stage Retrieval (2024) Query Reformulation and Expansion 45 Improving Query Representations for Dense Retrieval with Pseudo Relevance Feedback: A Reproducibility Study (2022) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 18 | Han Li 0005 | 40 | 3 | 52 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 52 DualGR: Generative Retrieval with Long and Short-Term Interests Modeling (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 19 | Shuaiqiang Wang COI: co-author | 40 | 3 | 79 Model Editing for New Document Integration in Generative Information Retrieval (2026) Generative Retrieval 37 RankElectra: Semi-supervised Pre-training of Learning-to-Rank Electra for Web-scale Search (2025) Language Model Pre-training and Adaptation |
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| 20 | Sheng-Chieh Lin | 40 | 3 | 44 Pyserini: A Python Toolkit for Reproducible Information Retrieval Research with Sparse and Dense Representations (2021) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency 43 One Blade for One Purpose: Advancing Math Information Retrieval using Hybrid Search (2023) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
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| 21 | Franco Maria Nardini COI: co-author | 40 | 3 | 43 Expansion via Prediction of Importance with Contextualization (2020) Sparse and Dense Retrieval Encoders 42 Effective Inference-Free Retrieval for Learned Sparse Representations (2025) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
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| 22 | Zhen Qin 0001 | 40 | 3 | 79 Transformer Memory as a Differentiable Search Index (2022) Generative Retrieval 41 Can Query Expansion Improve Generalization of Strong Cross-Encoder Rankers? (2024) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 23 | Jing Liu 0022 | 40 | 3 | 79 TOME: A Two-stage Approach for Model-based Retrieval (2023) Generative Retrieval 41 RocketQAv2: A Joint Training Method for Dense Passage Retrieval and Passage Re-ranking (2021) Dense Bi-Encoder Training and Representation Learning |
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| 24 | Andrew Parry | 40 | 3 | 45 [inline-graphic not available: see fulltext] SuiteEval: Simplifying Retrieval Benchmarks (2026) Retrieval Toolkits and Reproducibility 41 Variations in Relevance Judgments and the Shelf Life of Test Collections (2025) Test Collection Construction and Pooling |
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| 25 | Huiqiang Jiang | 40 | 3 | 40 RetrievalAttention: Accelerating Long-Context LLM Inference via Vector Retrieval (2025) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency 40 LeanK: Learnable K Cache Channel Pruning for Efficient Decoding (2025) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
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| 26 | Peitian Zhang | 40 | 3 | 79 Generative Retrieval via Term Set Generation (2024) Generative Retrieval 66 From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrieval (2025) Generative Retrieval |
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| 27 | Falk Scholer | 40 | 3 | 46 Query association for effective retrieval (2002) Query Reformulation and Expansion 44 Can Generative LLMs Create Query Variants for Test Collections? An Exploratory Study (2023) Query Reformulation and Expansion |
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| 28 | Wenlin Zhang 0001 | 39 | 3 | 75 NEZHA: A Zero-sacrifice and Hyperspeed Decoding Architecture for Generative Recommendations (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 43 Personalize Before Retrieve: LLM-based Personalized Query Expansion for User-Centric Retrieval (2026) Personalized and Conversational RAG |
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| 29 | Yupeng Hou | 39 | 3 | 46 Generating Long Semantic IDs in Parallel for Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 45 Inductive Generative Recommendation via Retrieval-based Speculation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 30 | Jurek Leonhardt | 39 | 3 | 42 Understanding the User: An Intent-Based Ranking Dataset (2024) Query Reformulation and Expansion 41 Efficient Neural Ranking Using Forward Indexes and Lightweight Encoders (2024) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
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| 31 | Leif Azzopardi COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 44 Query Variation Performance Prediction for Systematic Reviews (2018) Query Performance Prediction 44 When is query performance prediction effective? (2009) Query Performance Prediction |
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| 33 | Paul Thomas 0001 | 39 | 3 | 44 Can Generative LLMs Create Query Variants for Test Collections? An Exploratory Study (2023) Query Reformulation and Expansion 43 UQV100: A Test Collection with Query Variability (2016) Query Performance Prediction |
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| 34 | Sebastian Bruch 0001 COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 42 Forward Index Compression for Learned Sparse Retrieval (2026) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency 40 TF-Ranking: Scalable TensorFlow Library for Learning-to-Rank (2019) Retrieval Toolkits and Reproducibility |