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On Correlating Factors for Domain Adaptation Performance

Information Retrieval 2025-01-27 v1 Applications

Abstract

Dense retrievers have demonstrated significant potential for neural information retrieval; however, they lack robustness to domain shifts, limiting their efficacy in zero-shot settings across diverse domains. In this paper, we set out to analyze the possible factors that lead to successful domain adaptation of dense retrievers. We include domain similarity proxies between generated queries to test and source domains. Furthermore, we conduct a case study comparing two powerful domain adaptation techniques. We find that generated query type distribution is an important factor, and generating queries that share a similar domain to the test documents improves the performance of domain adaptation methods. This study further emphasizes the importance of domain-tailored generated queries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.14466,
  title  = {On Correlating Factors for Domain Adaptation Performance},
  author = {Goksenin Yuksel and Jaap Kamps},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.14466},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:16:08.118Z