Collaborative Document Simplification Using Multi-Agent Systems

Dengzhao Fang, Jipeng Qiang, Xiaoye Ouyang, Yi Zhu, Yunhao Yuan, Yun Li


Abstract
Research on text simplification has been ongoing for many years. However, the task of document simplification (DS) remains a significant challenge due to the need to consider complex factors such as technical terminology, metaphors, and overall coherence. In this work, we introduce a novel multi-agent framework for document simplification (AgentSimp) based on large language models (LLMs). This framework emulates the collaborative process of a human expert team through the roles played by multiple agents, addressing the intricate demands of document simplification. We explore two communication strategies among agents (pipeline-style and synchronous) and two document reconstruction strategies (Direct and Iterative ). According to both automatic evaluation metrics and human evaluation results, the documents simplified by AgentSimp are deemed to be more thoroughly simplified and more coherent on a variety of articles across different types and styles.
Anthology ID:
2025.coling-main.60
Volume:
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Owen Rambow, Leo Wanner, Marianna Apidianaki, Hend Al-Khalifa, Barbara Di Eugenio, Steven Schockaert
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
897–912
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.60/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Dengzhao Fang, Jipeng Qiang, Xiaoye Ouyang, Yi Zhu, Yunhao Yuan, and Yun Li. 2025. Collaborative Document Simplification Using Multi-Agent Systems. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 897–912, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Collaborative Document Simplification Using Multi-Agent Systems (Fang et al., COLING 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.60.pdf