Fine-grained Readability Controlled Summarization of Scientific Documents via Control Vectors

Isabel Cachola, Kuleen Sasse, Mark Dredze

Keywords: abstractive summarisation, few-shot summarisation

Abstract: Plain Language Summarization (PLS) generates summaries of technical documents accessible to non-expert audiences. Readability -- commonly used to evaluate PLS -- has often been treated coarsely (expert vs. lay) although it exists on a spectrum with different levels for different readers. We propose a light weight control vector method for fine-grained readability control in scientific summarization along with a requirements-based framework for data selection. Our framework enforces: (1) readability levels differ substantially, and (2) paired examples share comparable content. Under this, control vectors enable more precise readability control than other popular methods.

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Submission Number: 26