@inproceedings{li-ng-2025-think,
title = "Think{\&}Cite: Improving Attributed Text Generation with Self-Guided Tree Search and Progress Reward Modeling",
author = "Li, Junyi and
Ng, Hwee Tou",
editor = "Che, Wanxiang and
Nabende, Joyce and
Shutova, Ekaterina and
Pilehvar, Mohammad Taher",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2025",
address = "Vienna, Austria",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.490/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.490",
pages = "9928--9942",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-251-0",
abstract = "Despite their outstanding capabilities, large language models (LLMs) are prone to hallucination and producing factually incorrect information. This challenge has spurred efforts in attributed text generation, which prompts LLMs to generate content with supporting evidence. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, called Think{\&}Cite, and formulate attributed text generation as a multi-step reasoning problem integrated with search. Specifically, we propose Self-Guided Monte Carlo Tree Search (SG-MCTS), which capitalizes on the self-reflection capability of LLMs to reason about the intermediate states of MCTS for guiding the tree expansion process. To provide reliable and comprehensive feedback, we introduce Progress Reward Modeling to measure the progress of tree search from the root to the current state from two aspects, i.e., generation and attribution progress. We conduct extensive experiments on three datasets and the results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline approaches."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="li-ng-2025-think">
<titleInfo>
<title>Think&Cite: Improving Attributed Text Generation with Self-Guided Tree Search and Progress Reward Modeling</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Junyi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hwee</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Tou</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2025-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wanxiang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Che</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Joyce</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Nabende</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ekaterina</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Shutova</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Mohammad</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Taher</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Pilehvar</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Vienna, Austria</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-251-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Despite their outstanding capabilities, large language models (LLMs) are prone to hallucination and producing factually incorrect information. This challenge has spurred efforts in attributed text generation, which prompts LLMs to generate content with supporting evidence. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, called Think&Cite, and formulate attributed text generation as a multi-step reasoning problem integrated with search. Specifically, we propose Self-Guided Monte Carlo Tree Search (SG-MCTS), which capitalizes on the self-reflection capability of LLMs to reason about the intermediate states of MCTS for guiding the tree expansion process. To provide reliable and comprehensive feedback, we introduce Progress Reward Modeling to measure the progress of tree search from the root to the current state from two aspects, i.e., generation and attribution progress. We conduct extensive experiments on three datasets and the results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline approaches.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">li-ng-2025-think</identifier>
<identifier type="doi">10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.490</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.490/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2025-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>9928</start>
<end>9942</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Think&Cite: Improving Attributed Text Generation with Self-Guided Tree Search and Progress Reward Modeling
%A Li, Junyi
%A Ng, Hwee Tou
%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 li-ng-2025-think
%X Despite their outstanding capabilities, large language models (LLMs) are prone to hallucination and producing factually incorrect information. This challenge has spurred efforts in attributed text generation, which prompts LLMs to generate content with supporting evidence. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, called Think&Cite, and formulate attributed text generation as a multi-step reasoning problem integrated with search. Specifically, we propose Self-Guided Monte Carlo Tree Search (SG-MCTS), which capitalizes on the self-reflection capability of LLMs to reason about the intermediate states of MCTS for guiding the tree expansion process. To provide reliable and comprehensive feedback, we introduce Progress Reward Modeling to measure the progress of tree search from the root to the current state from two aspects, i.e., generation and attribution progress. We conduct extensive experiments on three datasets and the results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline approaches.
%R 10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.490
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.490/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.acl-long.490
%P 9928-9942
Markdown (Informal)
[Think&Cite: Improving Attributed Text Generation with Self-Guided Tree Search and Progress Reward Modeling](https://aclanthology.org/2025.acl-long.490/) (Li & Ng, ACL 2025)
ACL