We are pleased to invite you to participate in the premier annual event on research and applications of recommendation technologies, the Eighth ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2014). The conference will be held from Oct 6 to 10, 2014 in Foster City, Silicon Valley, California. Previous conferences have been distinguished by a strong level of interaction between researchers and practitioners in the sharing of ideas, problems and solutions. The 2014 conference will continue and reinforce this tradition due to its location in Silicon Valley, the home of some of the world’s largest technology companies and of thousands of startups.
We construe recommender systems broadly, including applications ranging from e-commerce to social networking, platforms from web to mobile and beyond, and a wide variety of technologies ranging from collaborative filtering to case-based reasoning. Topics of interest for RecSys 2014 include (but are not limited to):
Algorithm scalability
Case studies of real-world implementations
Conversational recommender systems
Context-aware recommenders
Evaluation metrics and studies
Explanations and evidence
Group recommenders
Impact studies
Innovative/New applications
Machine learning for recommendation
Novel paradigms
Personalization
Preference elicitation
Privacy and Security
Recommendation algorithms
Social recommenders
User interfaces
Semantic web technologies for recommendation
Targeted advertising
Trust and reputation
Theoretical foundations
User modelling
User studies
Important Dates
Paper submission: May 7, 2014*
Notifications: July 7, 2014
Camera Ready submission: July 24, 2014
*A notification to KDD’14 authors: Since KDD notification deadline falls a few days after Recsys submission deadline, you can submit your KDD’14 paper to Recsys (by May 7th). If you are notified that the KDD submission is accepted, you are expected to immediately withdraw the Recsys submission and notify the program chairs. For such submissions, a special field in the submission form will need to be populated as well.
Paper Format and Submission
All submissions and reviews will be handled electronically in PDF format. RecSys 2014 submissions should be prepared according to the standard double-column ACM SIG proceedings format. Additional information about formatting and style files are available online (tighter alternate style). The review process is single-blind, not double-blind (i.e. not anonymized). Thus, please include the author’s names.
Papers must be electronically submitted to the CMT Web site by 11:59pm Pacific Time on Wednesday May 7th 2014. In order to be fair to all authors, there will be no extensions to the submission deadline. Papers not submitted by the deadline will not be reviewed.
Note that the CMT site allows you to upload updated versions of your paper up until the deadline – so you may want to upload an early version of the paper which you can later (if you wish to) overwrite with a newer version of the paper up until the deadline.
There are two paper submission categories:
LONG PAPER submissions should report on substantial contributions of lasting value. The maximum length is 8 pages. Each accepted long paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in a plenary session as part of the main conference program. We expect the review process to be highly selective: the acceptance rates for full papers in the past three years were 20-24%.
SHORT PAPER submissions typically discuss exciting new work that is not yet mature enough for a long paper. The maximum length is 4 pages. Each accepted short paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in a poster session. The presentation may include a system demonstration. Note that rejected long paper submissions will not be automatically considered as short papers.
RecSys 2014 is pleased to invite proposals for tutorials to be held in conjunction with the conference. The goal of the tutorials is to provide the larger conference community an opportunity to learn about recommender system concepts and techniques and serve as a venue to share presenters’ expertise with the global community of recommender system researchers and practitioners.
Tutorials are 90 minute intensive instructional sessions focused on specific topics including, but not limited to:
Introductions to recommender systems or specific techniques
Methodologies for evaluating and measuring
Building and deploying recommender systems
Designing the user experience
Intersections of recommender systems with other domains
We actively encourage both researchers and industry practitioners to submit tutorial proposals.
Please submit tutorial proposals on or before May 19. We will inform the authors about the results of the review process on June, 9, and the camera-ready versions are due on July 24. All deadlines refer to 23:59 in the UTC time zone.
Proposal Format and Submission
The tutorial proposal should be a PDF document no more than 2 pages long, submitted by e-mail to and organized as follows:
Tutorial Title
Name, email address, and affiliation for tutorial instructor(s). Each listed instructor should present at the conference.
Detailed bulleted outline of the tutorial (this should take most of the proposal’s space)
Targeted audience, prerequisite knowledge
Importance of this topic for the RecSys community
History of prior tutorials from the instructor(s)
List of relevant publications
Call for Workshops
RecSys 2014 is pleased to invite proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with the conference. The goal of the workshops is to provide additional venues for presenting research on topics of interest and an informal forum to discuss research questions and challenges.
We encourage proposals for a wide range of workshops, including but not limited to:
Working group meetings organized around a specific problem; such workshops may wish to ask participants to submit a short white paper or position statement.
One day mini-conferences on specialized topics; such workshops may have their own paper submission and review processes.
Mini-competitions or challenges around selected topics with individual or team participation.
We welcome proposals for half-day and full-day workshops.
We encourage you to contact us in advance with workshop ideas; we will work with prospective workshop organizers to help them design
successful proposals. We actively encourage both researchers and industry practitioners to submit proposals
Important Dates
Workshop proposal submission: April 7, 2014
Workshop proposal notifications: April 28, 2014
Workshop papers: July 21, 2014
Camera ready workshop summaries: July 24, 204
All deadlines refer to 23:59 in the UTC time zone.
Proposal format
The workshop proposal should be a PDF document no more than 4 pages long, submitted by e-mail to and organized as follows:
Workshop title
Name, email address, and affiliation for workshop chair(s)
Requested duration (half day or full day), and maximum number of participants
Short description of workshop for use in advertising workshop to prospective participants. This description should include the topic, format, and details about what type of submission is requested from prospective attendees. It should not include the title and organizers (all of which will be inserted by the conference).
Description of workshop activities. Outline how the workshop will be organized and how the time will be spent. If the workshop is selective, also outline the process of selecting participants.
Description of plans for promoting the workshop (aside from the conference website and announcements, how will you let people know about this workshop).
Plans for disseminating the results of the workshop (if any).
History of prior workshops on this topic (if any).
The Recommender Systems 2014 Doctoral Symposium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers from both academia and industry. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have an idea and an area, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along their research that they can no longer make changes. Typically, this means they will have made or are making their dissertation proposal, but still be at least a year from completion. The feedback from attendees in previous years has been very positive and the Doctoral Symposium has been considered very useful in providing research guidance.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: June 2, 2014
Notification: July 7, 2014
Camera ready papers: July 24, 2014
Symposium Objectives
The symposium has the following objectives:
Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students’ current research and guidance on future research directions.
Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from faculty and students outside their own institution.
Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research.
Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events.
Student participants will have their extended abstracts (4 pages) published in the conference proceedings. They will also have the opportunity to present a poster of their work during the poster session at the main conference.
All participants are expected to attend the entire symposium, including a group dinner taking place before the conference (subject to funding). Each student will present their work to the group with substantial time allocated for discussion and questions by participating faculty and other students.
Being accepted into the symposium is an honor, and involves a commitment to giving and receiving thoughtful commentary with an eye towards shaping the field and upcoming participants in the field.
Applying for the Doctoral Symposium
Submissions are invited from current graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research by a panel of established researchers. Funding for selected applicants may be available to offset some accommodation expenses — please check here for updates later on.
Submission materials
Submissions should include the following:
An extended abstract (see below).
A curriculum vitae.
A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation, including questions for symposium mentors. Submit your contribution to . Your contribution should be named lastname_ds.pdf, where lastname is your family name. The file must be no larger than 5 Mbytes.
Extended Abstract
Prepare a four-page extended abstract of your thesis work in the ACM SIG Proceedings Format. The extended abstract will be evaluated with regard to:
Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques.
Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues in recommender systems.
Rigor and validity of claims, argumentation, methodology, results, and interpretations.
Clarity and persuasiveness of expression.
The accepted extended abstracts will be published in the Conference Proceedings and available in the ACM Digital library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.
Additional factors, such as position within the doctoral process and institutional representation, may be taken into account if the number of applicants is particularly large. Candidates who have a developed idea but who still have time to be influenced will receive the strongest consideration. This means that the candidate will have made a dissertation proposal but still be at least a year away from completion. Participants in the symposium will be selected by the Doctoral Symposium Committee.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference (with the exception that the contributions will be made available to the symposium participants one week before the event). Submissions should contain no information or materials that are proprietary at publication time.
Doctoral Symposium Application Checklist
Well in advance of the deadline:
Create your submission materials:
Write an extended abstract according to the ACM SIG Proceedings Format. The abstract must print to no more than 4 pages.
Write a curriculum vitae.
Write a one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation.
Package all materials into a single PDF file. Name it according to the following convention: lastname_ds.pdf. Submit it to .
Test that your PDF prints correctly and that is it no larger than 5 Mbytes.
Doctoral Symposium Chairs
Yi Zhang, University of California Santa Cruz, USA
The demo session provides an exciting way for researchers and developers to present new recommender ideas, show off their work, and get valuable feedback from the recommender systems community.
We invite demonstrations of developments in all aspects of recommender systems, including (but not limited to):
Interaction techniques (preference elicitation interfaces, recommendation presentation, explanations, and more);
Tools for development and analysis of recommender systems (design tools, evaluation systems, analytics tools);
Innovative applications of recommender systems;
Recommender experiments (showing something new to RecSys attendees could be a valuable source of data on user interaction with your recommender concept).
RecSys demos provide innovators and researchers a unique opportunity to get feedback from the recommender systems community on their ideas. RecSys has an excellent history of being well-attended by industry representatives — past conferences have had attendees and presenters from Ebay, Pandora, Twitter, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix, Amazon, IBM, etc. The blend of industry and academic attention provides an excellent environment to demonstrate and discuss your latest invention or idea. Taking advantage of this environment, the demo track is particularly useful for several groups:
Researchers wanting to allow attendees to interact with their work, not just see it presented, and possibly gather usage data for feedback;
Deployed recommender systems available to interact with;
Early stage start-ups looking to showcase their ideas and gain feedback and exposure.
Submissions
Demos should be submitted in PDF format through the Easychair system and must include:
A two-page demo summary that includes a link to a narrated screen capture of your system in action (ideally a video). This two-page summary of accepted demo will be included in the conference proceedings. For a formatting template, please see here (tighter alternate style);
A one-page description of the demonstrated system and the required setup. If the system will feature an installable component (e.g., mobile app) or web site for users to use throughout or after the conference, please mention this. The description should also provide information about the presenter(s), including their relationship to the project.
Note: At least one of the authors of each accepted demo is required to attend the conference.
Rong Hu, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
Alan Said, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Nava Tintarev, University of Aberdeen, UK
Paolo Viappiani, Universite’ Pierre et Marie Curie, France
Quan Yuan, Taobao, China
Werner Geyer, IBM T.J. Watson Research, USA
Elizabeth Daly, IBM, Republic of Ireland
Marko Tkalčič, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Giovanni Semeraro, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Marco de Gemmis, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Pasquale Lops, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy
Bart Knijnenburg, University of California, Irvine, USA
Call for Posters
The poster session offers an opportunity for presenting late-breaking research results and speculative or innovative work in progress. The informal setting of the poster session encourages presenters and participants to engage in lively discussions about the presented work. All submissions should convey a scientific result or work in progress that is not yet ready to be published as a full length research paper at a refereed conference, but the preliminary results are already interesting.
Submissions
Posters should be submitted in PDF format through the Easychair system and must include:
A two-page poster summary describing the late-breaking research. This two-page summary of accepted posterwill be included in the extended proceedings of the conference. For a formatting template, please see here (tighter alternate style).
In additions to the two-page submission, accepted poster authors will be asked to create a poster to be displayed in a dedicated poster area, and present their work during the poster session at the conference.
At least one of the authors of each accepted poster is required to attend the conference.
