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StaleBench: A Benchmark for Answer Freshness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Authors: Karan Singh;

StaleBench: A Benchmark for Answer Freshness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Abstract

StaleBench measures answer freshness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Systems, after a fact changes, how long a system keeps giving the old answer instead of the new one. It reports catch-up latency & recovery rate across refresh policies (never, batch, immediate), scored by exact match against a controlled ground truth (no language model as a judge), and runs on any RAG system whose documents can be changed. Across ten open models from three families (Qwen, Llama, Gemma; released 2024 to 2026), about half of all answers stay stale even with immediate re-indexing; the cause is the position of the documents in the context, not the retrieval. It also finds the cause, document position, and tests a fix (placing the newest document last) that attempts to solve it for capable models but backfires on others, so each system must be measured rather than assumed.

Keywords

Large Language Models, retrieval-augmented generation, RAG, Evaluation, answer freshness, catch-up latency

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average