Searchplex ID Retrieval terminology registry

Task

Passage Retrieval

Canonical ID https://id.searchplex.net/passage-retrieval/

A retrieval task in which the retrievable units are passages or passage-like text segments rather than whole documents or other larger items.

Scope

Passage retrieval is common in open-domain question answering, RAG, and passage-ranking benchmarks. It is distinct from chunking, which creates or selects the units, and from passage ranking, which emphasizes ordering a set of passage candidates.

Observed terms

  • Passage Ranking academic
  • Chunk Retrieval industry

Part of family

Not equivalent to

  • Passage Retrieval is not Chunking. Chunking creates passage-like units; passage retrieval retrieves such units for a query or information need.
  • Passage Retrieval is not Dense Passage Retrieval. Dense Passage Retrieval is a specific dense neural method; passage retrieval is the broader task of retrieving passages.
  • Passage Retrieval is not Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Passage retrieval is often used inside RAG systems, but RAG is the broader retrieval-augmented generation pattern.
  • Passage Retrieval is not Document Retrieval. Document retrieval returns documents as the primary retrievable units; passage retrieval returns passages or passage-like segments.

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ID