Which benchmarks measure performance on scientific literature review tasks?

Benchmarks for scientific literature review tasks include datasets like LitSearch, SciReviewGen, SWIFT‐Review, and RoBBR that measure performance across retrieval, generation, screening, extraction, and meta-evaluation areas.

Abstract

Benchmarks for scientific literature review tasks address five primary areas: retrieval, generation, screening, extraction, and meta-evaluation. Seventeen studies target retrieval using datasets such as LitSearch, CLEF TAR, CSMeD, SIGIR2017-PICO-Collection, FASS‐BSLR, RELISH, and ResearchArena. These studies report performance using metrics such as recall, precision, Mean Average Precision, normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain, and Work Saved over Sampling. Eleven studies focus on generation tasks—including review, table, or abstract writing—with benchmarks like SciReviewGen, ARXIV2TABLE, MSLR2022, ScholarQABench, and Manalyzer; performance is measured by ROUGE scores, hallucination rates, semantic coverage, and human ratings. Nine studies on screening tasks (using tools such as SWIFT‐Review and LGAR) report measures such as precision at high recall levels and WSS@95, while five studies on extraction or structured analysis (using RoBBR, EvidenceBench, and ECACT) employ metrics such as macro‐F1, accuracy, and Cohen’s kappa. One study adopts a meta‐evaluation benchmark using Elo ratings and inter‐annotator agreement. Overall, papers combine automated retrieval and overlap metrics with human evaluation methods to capture the multifaceted nature of performance in scientific literature review tasks.

Methods

We analyzed 40 sources from an initial pool of 1000, using 5 screening criteria. Each paper was reviewed for 4 key aspects that mattered most to the research question. More on methods

Papers identified with Elicit search

n = 1000

Papers screened using: Benchmark Focus, Computational Literature Review Systems, Beyond Methods Description Only, Literature Review Specific Application, Computational Component

n = 1000

Papers screened out

n = 960

Papers included for extraction

n = 40

Paper search

Using your research question "Which benchmarks measure performance on scientific literature review tasks?", we searched across over 126 million academic papers from the Semantic Scholar corpus. We retrieved the 1000 papers most relevant to the query.

Screening

We screened in sources based on their abstracts that met these criteria:

• Benchmark Focus: Does this study describe, develop, evaluate, present datasets for, or validate benchmarks/evaluation frameworks specifically designed to measure performance on scientific literature review tasks?
• Computational Literature Review Systems: Does this study focus on computational systems that perform literature search, screening, extraction, synthesis, or other core literature review functions, OR does it synthesize knowledge about literature review benchmarks through systematic/narrative reviews?
• Beyond Methods Description Only: Does this study go beyond only describing literature review methods to actually present, evaluate, or analyze benchmarks or evaluation metrics?
• Literature Review Specific Application: Are the benchmarks or evaluation approaches specifically applied to literature review tasks (rather than focusing solely on general information retrieval or text mining without literature review application)?
• Computational Component: Does this study include computational components rather than focusing exclusively on manual literature review processes?

We considered all screening questions together and made a holistic judgement about whether to screen in each paper.

Data extraction

We asked a large language model to extract each data column below from each paper. We gave the model the extraction instructions shown below for each column.

• Benchmark Type:

Identify and describe the specific type of benchmark created in the study. Look for explicit statements about the benchmark’s purpose, focus, and unique characteristics.

Extraction guidelines:

• Locate the benchmark description in the introduction or methods section
• Capture the specific scientific literature review task the benchmark addresses
• If multiple benchmark types are described, list all of them
• Be precise about the benchmark’s scope (e.g., retrieval, generation, search)

Examples might include:

• Hierarchical catalogue generation benchmark
• Literature search retrieval benchmark
• Information distillation benchmark

If no clear benchmark is described, write “Not applicable” or “No benchmark created”

• Benchmark Dataset Characteristics:

Extract detailed information about the dataset used to create or evaluate the benchmark.

Look for:

• Total number of items in the dataset
• Types of items (e.g., research papers, citations, queries)
• Domain or field of research covered
• Data collection method
• Source of data items

Extraction guidelines:

• Prioritize quantitative details (e.g., “7.6k literature review catalogues and 389k reference papers”)
• Note the specific research domains if mentioned
• If multiple datasets are used, list all with their characteristics
• If dataset details are incomplete, note “Insufficient information”

Format examples:

• “7,600 literature review catalogues from scientific papers”

• “597 literature search queries across ML and NLP domains”

• Evaluation Metrics:

Identify and describe the specific metrics used to assess benchmark performance.

Extraction guidelines:

• Locate metrics in results, methods, or discussion sections
• Capture both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessment approaches
• Note the specific performance dimensions being measured
• If multiple metrics are used, list all of them

Look for metrics such as:

• Recall@5
• Semantic similarity scores
• Informativeness ratings
• Comparative performance against baseline models

Format examples:

• “24.8% difference in absolute recall@5”

• “Two evaluation metrics for informativeness and structural similarity”

• Benchmark Models and Comparisons:

Document the models or systems tested against the benchmark.

Extraction guidelines:

• List all models/systems evaluated
• Note their performance relative to the benchmark
• Capture any comparative analysis between different approaches
• Include both state-of-the-art and baseline models

Look for:

• Specific model names (e.g., BART, ChatGPT)
• Performance rankings
• Comparative performance percentages

Format examples:

• “BART and ChatGPT tested, with performance variations noted”
• “Commercial search engines performed 32 points below best dense retriever”

Results

Characteristics of Included Studies

Distribution of Literature Review Automation Tasks

• Retrieval, search, or ranking tasks: Addressed in 17 studies. These focus on identifying and prioritizing relevant literature for systematic reviews or evidence synthesis.
• Generation tasks: Addressed in 11 studies. These include review, table, summary, reference, or abstract generation.
• Screening tasks: Addressed in 9 studies. These include citation, abstract, or full-text screening.
• Extraction tasks: Addressed in 5 studies. These include data, evidence, risk of bias, or meta-analysis.
• Meta-evaluation or meta-analysis: Addressed in 1 study.
• Other tasks: Addressed in 10 studies. These include query generation, compliance, information distillation, academic survey, trial design, systematic review-style reasoning, or multiple systematic literature review tasks.

Distribution of Evaluation Approaches

• Information retrieval metrics: Used in 27 studies. Metrics include precision, recall, F1, Mean Average Precision (MAP), normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (nDCG), Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR), Average Precision (AP), and others.
• Human evaluation: Used in 6 studies. Includes inter-annotator agreement, Cohen’s kappa, or explicit human ratings.
• Overlap, coverage, or consistency metrics: Used in 6 studies. Includes schema/cell overlap, coverage, factual consistency, or hallucination rate.
• Specialized or composite metrics: Used in 7 studies. Includes Elo ratings, CEDS, CQE, ECACT, or outcome difference.
• No mention found of evaluation approach: In 6 studies.

Some studies addressed multiple task types or used multiple evaluation approaches. We did not find mention of evaluation approach for 6 studies, and task type information was sometimes ambiguous due to overlapping or unclear descriptions.

Thematic Analysis

Benchmarks for Literature Retrieval and Screening Tasks

Benchmarks in this category focus on identifying, retrieving, and prioritizing relevant literature for systematic reviews or evidence synthesis. Key benchmarks include:

• LitSearch, CLEF Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) (2017–2019), CSMeD, SIGIR2017-PICO-Collection, FASS-BSLR, RELISH, and ResearchArena: These benchmarks use large-scale datasets such as PubMed, MEDLINE, and S2ORC, and evaluate models using recall, precision, Mean Average Precision, normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain, Work Saved over Sampling, and related metrics.
• Model types: Both classical information retrieval models (such as BM25 and term frequency-inverse document frequency) and modern transformer-based or large language model approaches are tested.
• Findings: Some studies (e.g., Kang and Xiong, 2024) report that keyword-based retrieval still outperforms large language model-based methods in certain settings, while others (e.g., Skarlinski et al., 2024) demonstrate large language models matching or exceeding human performance in specific retrieval and synthesis tasks.

Benchmarks for Literature Summarization and Synthesis Tasks

This theme covers benchmarks designed to evaluate the ability of models to generate summaries, reviews, or structured tables from collections of scientific papers. Notable benchmarks include:

• SciReviewGen, ARXIV2TABLE, MSLR2022, ScholarQABench, and Manalyzer: Evaluation metrics include ROUGE, human preference ratings, semantic coverage, factual consistency, and hallucination rates.
• Findings: Some large language models and transformer-based models achieve promising results, but challenges remain in factuality, citation accuracy, and domain adaptation. Human evaluation is often used to supplement automated metrics, reflecting the complexity of assessing synthesis quality.

Benchmarks for Structured Literature Analysis Tasks

Structured analysis tasks include risk of bias assessment, data element extraction, compliance and traceability, and meta-evaluation. Key benchmarks:

• RoBBR, EvidenceBench, ECACT, SciArena-Eval, and internal datasets: These benchmarks use composite or task-specific metrics such as ECACT score, macro-F1, accuracy, and Cohen’s kappa.
• Findings: Automation is advancing, but human oversight remains essential, especially in high-stakes or regulatory contexts.

Evaluation Methodologies Across Benchmarks

Benchmark Category

Summary of Evaluation Approaches:

• Primary metrics: Accuracy was the only metric used in more than one category (2 out of 4 categories). All other metrics were unique to a single category, including recall, precision, Mean Average Precision, normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain, Work Saved over Sampling, Average Precision, ROUGE, human ratings, semantic coverage, hallucination rate, macro-F1, Cohen’s kappa, composite scores (ECACT), Elo ratings, and agreement.
• Evaluation methods: Automated evaluation methods were used in 3 out of 4 categories. Human-based evaluation methods were used in all 4 categories. Comparison-based methods, statistical analysis, and model-based evaluator assessment were each used in 1 out of 4 categories.
• Coverage: We did not find any categories without at least one automated and one human-based evaluation method. No information was missing for any category.