Deng, X., Wang, X. and Stevenson, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-9483-6006 (2025) The next phase of scientific fact-checking: advanced evidence retrieval from complex structured academic papers. In: Zamani, H., (ed.) ICTIR '25: Proceedings of the 2025 International ACM SIGIR Conference on Innovative Concepts and Theories in Information Retrieval (ICTIR). ICTIR '25: International ACM SIGIR Conference on Innovative Concepts and Theories in Information Retrieval, 18 Jul 2025, Padua, Italy. ACM ISBN 9798400718618
Abstract
Scientific fact-checking aims to determine the veracity of scientific claims by retrieving and analysing evidence from research literature. The problem is inherently more complex than general fact-checking since it must accommodate the evolving nature of scientific knowledge, the structural complexity of academic literature and the challenges posed by long-form, multimodal scientific expression. However, existing approaches focus on simplified versions of the problem based on small-scale datasets consisting of abstracts rather than full papers, thereby avoiding the distinct challenges associated with processing complete documents. This paper examines the limitations of current scientific fact-checking systems and reveals the many potential features and resources that could be exploited to advance their performance. It identifies key research challenges within evidence retrieval, including (1) evidence-driven retrieval that addresses semantic limitations and topic imbalance (2) time-aware evidence retrieval with citation tracking to mitigate outdated information, (3) structured document parsing to leverage long-range context, (4) handling complex scientific expressions, including tables, figures, and domain-specific terminology and (5) assessing the credibility of scientific literature. Preliminary experiments were conducted to substantiate these challenges and identify potential solutions. This perspective paper aims to advance scientific fact-checking with a specialised IR system tailored for real-world applications.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Evidence retrieval; Scientific fact-checking |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2025 09:56 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2025 11:45 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | ACM |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1145/3731120.3744614 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:228448 |