@inproceedings{xiang-etal-2026-title,
title = "Title It Right: Faithful and Attractive Paper Title Generation via {P}areto Dominance Alignment",
author = "Xiang, Ke and
Piao, Yingchao and
Wang, Zexin and
Hou, Yufei and
li, Jianhui and
LI, Jingjing and
Liu, Zihan and
Cui, Hang and
Pei, Changhua",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.829/",
pages = "17577--17595",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Generating academic paper titles requires balancing two key goals: faithfulness to the content and attractiveness to readers. Existing methods often treat title generation as a simple summarization task, producing accurate but unengaging titles. While multi-objective Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) offers a potential solution, our empirical analysis shows that combining conflicting objectives into a single reward is associated with substantial gradient interference during training. To address this problem, drawing inspiration from Pareto dominance in multi-objective optimization, we propose Multi-Objective Dominance Alignment (MODA), a data-centric training strategy tailored for academic title generation. MODA retains preference pairs with strict Pareto dominance, thereby reducing exposure to supervision with opposing reward directions. We implement MODA using dual reward models to independently score both dimensions. Across our experiments, this filtering strategy improves the observed balance between faithfulness and attractiveness, outperforms Human Author baselines, and approaches the performance of frontier models despite using an 8B backbone. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/realyoume/title{\_}it{\_}right."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="xiang-etal-2026-title">
<titleInfo>
<title>Title It Right: Faithful and Attractive Paper Title Generation via Pareto Dominance Alignment</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ke</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Xiang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yingchao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Piao</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zexin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yufei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hou</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jianhui</namePart>
<namePart type="family">li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jingjing</namePart>
<namePart type="family">LI</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zihan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Cui</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Changhua</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Pei</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-462-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Generating academic paper titles requires balancing two key goals: faithfulness to the content and attractiveness to readers. Existing methods often treat title generation as a simple summarization task, producing accurate but unengaging titles. While multi-objective Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) offers a potential solution, our empirical analysis shows that combining conflicting objectives into a single reward is associated with substantial gradient interference during training. To address this problem, drawing inspiration from Pareto dominance in multi-objective optimization, we propose Multi-Objective Dominance Alignment (MODA), a data-centric training strategy tailored for academic title generation. MODA retains preference pairs with strict Pareto dominance, thereby reducing exposure to supervision with opposing reward directions. We implement MODA using dual reward models to independently score both dimensions. Across our experiments, this filtering strategy improves the observed balance between faithfulness and attractiveness, outperforms Human Author baselines, and approaches the performance of frontier models despite using an 8B backbone. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/realyoume/title_it_right.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">xiang-etal-2026-title</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.829/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>17577</start>
<end>17595</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Title It Right: Faithful and Attractive Paper Title Generation via Pareto Dominance Alignment
%A Xiang, Ke
%A Piao, Yingchao
%A Wang, Zexin
%A Hou, Yufei
%A li, Jianhui
%A LI, Jingjing
%A Liu, Zihan
%A Cui, Hang
%A Pei, Changhua
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F xiang-etal-2026-title
%X Generating academic paper titles requires balancing two key goals: faithfulness to the content and attractiveness to readers. Existing methods often treat title generation as a simple summarization task, producing accurate but unengaging titles. While multi-objective Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) offers a potential solution, our empirical analysis shows that combining conflicting objectives into a single reward is associated with substantial gradient interference during training. To address this problem, drawing inspiration from Pareto dominance in multi-objective optimization, we propose Multi-Objective Dominance Alignment (MODA), a data-centric training strategy tailored for academic title generation. MODA retains preference pairs with strict Pareto dominance, thereby reducing exposure to supervision with opposing reward directions. We implement MODA using dual reward models to independently score both dimensions. Across our experiments, this filtering strategy improves the observed balance between faithfulness and attractiveness, outperforms Human Author baselines, and approaches the performance of frontier models despite using an 8B backbone. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/realyoume/title_it_right.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.829/
%P 17577-17595
Markdown (Informal)
[Title It Right: Faithful and Attractive Paper Title Generation via Pareto Dominance Alignment](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.829/) (Xiang et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Ke Xiang, Yingchao Piao, Zexin Wang, Yufei Hou, Jianhui li, Jingjing LI, Zihan Liu, Hang Cui, and Changhua Pei. 2026. Title It Right: Faithful and Attractive Paper Title Generation via Pareto Dominance Alignment. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026, pages 17577–17595, Budapest, Hungary. Association for Computational Linguistics.