Assembling the CREW: A Collaborative Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Automated Related Work Generation

Hai-Dang Dang, Bao-Yen Pham, Bao Nguyen, Tran Thi Huong, Huynh Thi Thanh Binh


Abstract
Automatic Related Work Generation (RWG) significantly reduces the human time and effort required to author the Related Work Section (RWS) of a research paper. However, prior methods leveraging multi-agent Large Language Models (LLMs) typically rely on a predefined workflow, where each agent is responsible for a specific step in the entire process. This rigid, static inter-agent coordination limits the adaptive collaboration required to synthesize complex scientific literature. To address this limitation, we propose CREW (Collaborative Reinforcement Learning for Related Work Generation), a novel framework where LLM agents bypass heuristic pipelines to dynamically coordinate by autonomously selecting actions, such as Retrieve, Disseminate, Compose, and Critique, driven by a policy optimized via Independent Proximal Policy Optimization (IPPO). Extensive experiments on a standard RWG benchmark demonstrate that our approach yields substantial quality improvements over strong existing baselines, while significantly reducing token costs. Code is available at https://github.com/YenPBao/CREW-Collaborative-MARL.git
Anthology ID:
2026.emnlp-main.2052
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Month:
October
Year:
2026
Address:
Budapest, Hungary
Editors:
Hung-Yi Lee, Sunipa Dev, Jessy Li, Desmond Elliott
Venue:
EMNLP
SIG:
SIGDAT
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
46725–46745
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URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.2052/
DOI:
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Cite (ACL):
Hai-Dang Dang, Bao-Yen Pham, Bao Nguyen, Tran Thi Huong, and Huynh Thi Thanh Binh. 2026. Assembling the CREW: A Collaborative Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Automated Related Work Generation. In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 46725–46745, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Assembling the CREW: A Collaborative Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Automated Related Work Generation (Dang et al., EMNLP 2026)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.emnlp-main.2052.pdf