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    <abstract>Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) has gained prominence through low-rank adaptation methods like LoRA. In this paper, we focus on sparsity-based PEFT (SPEFT), which introduces trainable sparse adaptations to the weight matrices in the model, offering greater flexibility in selecting fine-tuned parameters compared to low-rank methods. We conduct the first systematic evaluation of salience metrics for SPEFT, inspired by zero-cost NAS proxies, and identify simple gradient-based metrics is reliable, and results are on par with the best alternatives, offering both computational efficiency and robust performance. Additionally, we compare static and dynamic masking strategies, finding that static masking, which predetermines non-zero entries before training, delivers efficiency without sacrificing performance, while dynamic masking offers no substantial benefits. Across NLP tasks, a simple gradient-based, static SPEFT consistently outperforms other fine-tuning methods for LLMs, providing a simple yet effective baseline for SPEFT. Our work challenges the notion that complexity is necessary for effective PEFT, while our open-source framework establishes a reproducible benchmark for future research.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Refining Salience-Aware Sparse Fine-Tuning Strategies for Language Models
%A Liu, Xinxin
%A Thomas, Aaron
%A Zhang, Cheng
%A Cheng, Jianyi
%A Zhao, Yiren
%A Gao, Xitong
%Y Che, Wanxiang
%Y Nabende, Joyce
%Y Shutova, Ekaterina
%Y Pilehvar, Mohammad Taher
%S Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2025
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Vienna, Austria
%@ 979-8-89176-251-0
%F liu-etal-2025-refining
%X Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) has gained prominence through low-rank adaptation methods like LoRA. In this paper, we focus on sparsity-based PEFT (SPEFT), which introduces trainable sparse adaptations to the weight matrices in the model, offering greater flexibility in selecting fine-tuned parameters compared to low-rank methods. We conduct the first systematic evaluation of salience metrics for SPEFT, inspired by zero-cost NAS proxies, and identify simple gradient-based metrics is reliable, and results are on par with the best alternatives, offering both computational efficiency and robust performance. Additionally, we compare static and dynamic masking strategies, finding that static masking, which predetermines non-zero entries before training, delivers efficiency without sacrificing performance, while dynamic masking offers no substantial benefits. Across NLP tasks, a simple gradient-based, static SPEFT consistently outperforms other fine-tuning methods for LLMs, providing a simple yet effective baseline for SPEFT. Our work challenges the notion that complexity is necessary for effective PEFT, while our open-source framework establishes a reproducible benchmark for future research.
%R 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.1541
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.1541/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.1541
%P 31932-31945

Markdown (Informal)

[Refining Salience-Aware Sparse Fine-Tuning Strategies for Language Models](https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.1541/) (Liu et al., ACL 2025)

• Refining Salience-Aware Sparse Fine-Tuning Strategies for Language Models (Liu et al., ACL 2025)

ACL

• Xinxin Liu, Aaron Thomas, Cheng Zhang, Jianyi Cheng, Yiren Zhao, and Xitong Gao. 2025. Refining Salience-Aware Sparse Fine-Tuning Strategies for Language Models. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 31932–31945, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.