Publications

2026

1. ICML 2026

   Restoring Exploration after Post-Training: Latent Exploration Decoding for Large Reasoning Models

   Wenhui Tan, Fiorenzo Parascandolo, Enver Sangineto, Jianzhong Ju, Zhenbo Luo, Qian Cao, Rita Cucchiara, Ruihua Song, and Jian Luan

   In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations, 2026

   Bib arXiv PDF

   @inproceedings{tan2026restoring,
     title = {Restoring Exploration after Post-Training: Latent Exploration Decoding for Large Reasoning Models},
     author = {Tan, Wenhui and Parascandolo, Fiorenzo and Sangineto, Enver and Ju, Jianzhong and Luo, Zhenbo and Cao, Qian and Cucchiara, Rita and Song, Ruihua and Luan, Jian},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations,},
     year = {2026},
   }

2. ACL 2026
   (Oral, 4.5%)

   DPWriter: Reinforcement Learning with Diverse Planning Branching for Creative Writing

   Qian Cao, Yahui Liu, Wei Bi, Yi Zhao, Ruihua Song, Xiting Wang, Ruiming Tang, Guorui Zhou, and Han Li

   In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2026

   Bib arXiv PDF Overview

   

   @inproceedings{cao2026dpwriter,
     title = {DPWriter: Reinforcement Learning with Diverse Planning Branching for Creative Writing},
     author = {Cao, Qian and Liu, Yahui and Bi, Wei and Zhao, Yi and Song, Ruihua and Wang, Xiting and Tang, Ruiming and Zhou, Guorui and Li, Han},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics,},
     year = {2026},
   }

3. ICLR 2026

   Evaluating Text Creativity across Diverse Domains: A Dataset and Large Language Model Evaluator

   Qian Cao, Xiting Wang, Yuzhuo Yuan, Yahui Liu, Fang Luo, and Ruihua Song

   In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations, Jan 2026

   Bib arXiv PDF Overview Project Page

   

   @inproceedings{cao2025evaluating,
     title = {Evaluating Text Creativity across Diverse Domains: A Dataset and Large Language Model Evaluator},
     author = {Cao, Qian and Wang, Xiting and Yuan, Yuzhuo and Liu, Yahui and Luo, Fang and Song, Ruihua},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations,},
     year = {2026},
     month = jan,
   }

2025

1. MMM 2025

   Understanding the Roles of Visual Modality in Multimodal Dialogue: An Empirical Study

   Qian Cao, Ruihua Song, and Xu Chen

   In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, Jan 2025

   Bib PDF

   @inproceedings{Cao2025Understanding,
     title = {Understanding the Roles of Visual Modality in Multimodal Dialogue: An Empirical Study},
     author = {Cao, Qian and Song, Ruihua and Chen, Xu},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Multimedia Modeling,},
     year = {2025},
     month = jan,
     doi = {10.1007/978-981-96-2071-5_20},
   }

2. CJC

   YuLan: An Open-source Large Language Model

   Yutao Zhu, Kun Zhou, Kelong Mao, Wentong Chen, Yiding Sun, Zhipeng Chen, Qian Cao, Yihan Wu, Yushuo Chen, Feng Wang, and  others

   Chinese Journal of Computers, Jan 2025

   Bib arXiv PDF

   @article{zhu2024yulan,
     title = {YuLan: An Open-source Large Language Model},
     author = {Zhu, Yutao and Zhou, Kun and Mao, Kelong and Chen, Wentong and Sun, Yiding and Chen, Zhipeng and Cao, Qian and Wu, Yihan and Chen, Yushuo and Wang, Feng and others},
     journal = {Chinese Journal of Computers,},
     volume = {48},
     number = {1},
     pages = {1--18},
     year = {2025},
   }

2024

1. EMNLP 2024

   BSharedRAG: Backbone Shared Retrieval-Augmented Generation for the E-commerce Domain

   Kaisi Guan, Qian Cao, Yuchong Sun, Xiting Wang, and Ruihua Song

   In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024, Nov 2024

   Bib arXiv PDF Overview Project Page

   

   @inproceedings{Guan2024BSharedRAG,
     title = {BSharedRAG: Backbone Shared Retrieval-Augmented Generation for the E-commerce Domain},
     author = {Guan, Kaisi and Cao, Qian and Sun, Yuchong and Wang, Xiting and Song, Ruihua},
     booktitle = {Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024,},
     year = {2024},
     month = nov,
     doi = {10.18653/v1/2024.findings-emnlp.62},
   }

2. ACM MM 2024

   See or Guess: Counterfactually Regularized Image Captioning

   Qian Cao, Xu Chen, Ruihua Song, Xiting Wang, Xinting Huang, and Yuchen Ren

   In Proceedings of the 32th ACM international conference on Multimedia, Oct 2024

   Bib arXiv PDF Overview

   

   @inproceedings{Cao2024SeeOrGuess,
     title = {See or Guess: Counterfactually Regularized Image Captioning},
     author = {Cao, Qian and Chen, Xu and Song, Ruihua and Wang, Xiting and Huang, Xinting and Ren, Yuchen},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 32th ACM international conference on Multimedia,},
     year = {2024},
     month = oct,
     doi = {10.1145/3664647.3681458},
   }

2022

1. ACM MM 2022
   (Oral, 5.1%)

   Multi-Modal Experience Inspired AI Creation

   Qian Cao, Xu Chen, Ruihua Song, Hao Jiang, Guang Yang, and Zhao Cao

   In Proceedings of the 30th ACM international conference on Multimedia, Oct 2022

   Bib arXiv PDF Overview

   

   @inproceedings{Cao2022MultiModalEI,
     title = {Multi-Modal Experience Inspired AI Creation},
     author = {Cao, Qian and Chen, Xu and Song, Ruihua and Jiang, Hao and Yang, Guang and Cao, Zhao},
     booktitle = {Proceedings of the 30th ACM international conference on Multimedia,},
     year = {2022},
     month = oct,
     doi = {10.1145/3503161.3548189},
   }