| --- |
| language: |
| - en |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| pretty_name: ProSearch |
| tags: |
| - scientific-information-retrieval |
| - experimental-protocols |
| - benchmark |
| - AI-for-science |
| task_categories: |
| - text-retrieval |
| --- |
| |
| # ProSearch: Benchmarking Multi-Constraint Protocol Retrieval in Experimental Science |
|
|
| ProSearch is a benchmark for retrieving scientific method paragraphs |
| that satisfy natural-language queries containing multiple experimental |
| constraints. A relevant paragraph should support the constraints within |
| one coherent experimental setup. |
|
|
| The benchmark covers six experimental-science domains, with **1,515 |
| queries** and **358,178 method paragraphs**. |
|
|
| ## Dataset structure |
|
|
| Each domain directory contains four JSON files: |
|
|
| ``` text |
| prosearch/ |
| ├── cell_culture/ |
| ├── electrochemistry/ |
| ├── immunotechnology/ |
| ├── inorganic_materials/ |
| ├── organic_synthesis/ |
| └── polymer_materials/ |
| ``` |
|
|
| Each directory contains: |
|
|
| | File | Description | |
| |---|---| |
| | `paragraphs.json` | Method paragraph candidate corpus used in the main experiments reported in the paper. | |
| | `all_paragraphs.json` | Full paragraph candidate corpus used for full-text retrieval comparisons. | |
| | `queries_raw.json` | Raw queries for the domain. | |
| | `qrels_stage1.json` | Query–paragraph relevance judgments. The JSON object maps each query ID to paragraph IDs with relevance label 1. | |
|
|
| ## Dataset statistics |
|
|
| | Domain | Queries | Method paragraph pool | Full paragraph pool | |
| |---|---:|---:|---:| |
| | Cell culture | 284 | 46,004 | 311,042 | |
| | Electrochemistry | 201 | 91,375 | 409,133 | |
| | Immunotechnology | 264 | 93,315 | 644,077 | |
| | Inorganic materials | 247 | 46,136 | 240,380 | |
| | Organic synthesis | 252 | 30,371 | 197,506 | |
| | Polymer materials | 267 | 50,977 | 283,907 | |
| | **Total** | **1,515** | **358,178** | **2,086,045** | |
|
|
| The method paragraph pool is stored in `paragraphs.json`, while the full |
| paragraph pool is stored in `all_paragraphs.json`. The method paragraph |
| pool is used for the main benchmark experiments. The full paragraph pool |
| is used for the full-text retrieval analysis and contains paragraphs from |
| all body sections of the paper. Only the candidate pool changes between |
| the two settings; the queries and relevance definition remain the same. |
|
|
| ## Data construction |
|
|
| The data were derived from English-language open-access scientific |
| articles. The construction pipeline includes article parsing, |
| method-paragraph selection, structured protocol extraction and |
| normalization, query construction, candidate-pool construction, and |
| relevance judgment against the original paragraph text. |
|
|
| Candidate-pool membership alone does not determine relevance; relevance |
| labels are provided in the corresponding qrels files. |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| This dataset is released under the **Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 |
| International (CC BY 4.0)** license. See the [license |
| text](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| If you use ProSearch, please cite: |
|
|
| *ProSearch: Benchmarking Multi-Constraint Protocol Retrieval in |
| Experimental Science.* NeurIPS 2026 Evaluations & Datasets Track. |
|
|
| ## Limitations |
|
|
| While ProSearch provides a systematic evaluation of multi-constraint |
| protocol retrieval, several limitations remain. First, the field schemas |
| and constraint rules are designed by domain experts for selected |
| experimental protocol types across six domains, limiting coverage of other |
| experimental procedures and requiring additional expert effort for |
| extension. Second, ProSearch focuses on individual method paragraphs and |
| does not evaluate evidence integration across multiple paragraphs, tables, |
| or supplementary materials. Third, LLM-based protocol extraction and |
| relevance labeling, together with annotation pools constructed from |
| extracted records, may introduce errors or omit relevant evidence. |
| Although expert audits and robustness analyses support the stability of |
| the main retrieval findings, systematic biases cannot be fully ruled out. |
| Finally, while the queries are grounded in real experimental records, they |
| are generated using templates and may not fully reflect researchers' actual |
| information needs. Whether benchmark scores translate into retrieval |
| usefulness in real scientific workflows also remains to be established. |
| Future work will extend ProSearch to cross-paragraph protocol retrieval and |
| incorporate researcher-authored queries and human evaluations to assess its |
| practical applicability. |
|
|
