We invite you to contribute to the 13th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2019), the premier venue for research and applications of recommendation technologies. The upcoming RecSys conference will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from September 16th to September 20th, 2019. The conference will continue RecSys’ practice of connecting the research and practitioner communities to exchange ideas, frame problems, and share solutions. All accepted papers will be published by ACM.
We invite submissions on all aspects of recommender systems, including applications ranging from e-commerce to social networking, and a wide variety of technologies ranging from collaborative filtering to knowledge-based reasoning or deep learning. We welcome new research on recommendation technologies coming from very diverse communities ranging from psychology to mathematics. In particular, we care as much about the underlying algorithms and systems as we care about the human and economic impact of these systems.
Topics of interest for RecSys 2019 include but are not limited to (alphabetically ordered):
Algorithm scalability, performance, and implementations
Bias, bubbles and ethics of recommender systems
Case studies of real-world implementations
Context-aware recommender systems
Conversational recommender systems
Cross-domain recommendation
Economic models and consequences of recommender systems
Authors will be asked to assign a selection of predefined custom tags to describe their paper in the submission system. Tags can be assigned to indicate algorithms, interfaces, automated or user-centric evaluations, for example. Reviewers will also report their expertise over these tags, and the information will be used in review assignments.
Paper Submission Categories
LONG PAPERS should report on substantial contributions of lasting value. The maximum length is 8 pages (plus up to 1 page of references). Each accepted long paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in a plenary session as part of the main conference program. Each accepted long paper will also be allocated a presentation slot in a poster session to encourage discussion and follow-up between authors and attendees. Selected long papers will be considered as candidates for the ACM Europe Council Best Paper Award.
We expect the review process to be highly selective: the acceptance rates for full papers in the past few years was about 20%.
SHORT PAPERS typically discuss exciting new work that is not yet mature enough for a long paper. In particular, novel but significant proposals will be considered for acceptance to this category despite not having gone through sufficient experimental validation or lacking strong theoretical foundation. Applications of recommender systems to novel areas are especially welcome. The maximum length is 4 pages (plus up to 1 page references). Each accepted short paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented in a poster session. The poster presentation may include a system demonstration. Selected short papers will be invited as oral presentations. Note that rejected long paper submissions will not be considered as short papers.
SIGCHI Submitter Agreement
RecSys 2019 is a SIGCHI conference and making a submission to a SIGCHI conference is a serious matter. Submissions require time and effort by SIGCHI volunteers to organise and manage the reviewing process, and, if the submission is accepted, the publication and presentation process. Thus, anyone who submits to RecSys 2019 implicitly confirms the following statements:
I confirm that this submission is the work of myself and my co-authors.
I confirm that I or my co-authors hold copyright to the content, and have obtained appropriate permissions for any portions of the content that are copyrighted by others.
I confirm that any research reported in this submission involving human subjects has gone through the appropriate approval process at my institution.
I confirm that if this paper is accepted, I or one of my co-authors will attend the conference. Papers that are not presented at the conference by an author may be removed from the proceedings at the discretion of the program chairs.
Paper Format and Submission
All submissions and reviews will be handled electronically. RecSys 2019 submissions should be prepared according to the standard double-column ACM SIG proceedings format. Additional information about formatting and style files is available online. Papers must be submitted to PCS2 by 23:59, AoE (Anywhere on Earth) on April 23rd, 2019. There will be no extensions to the submission deadline.
The peer review process is double-blind (i.e. anonymised). This means that all submissions must not include information identifying the authors or their organisation. Specifically, do not include the authors’ names and affiliations, anonymise citations to your previous work and avoid providing any other information that would allow to identify the authors, such as acknowledgments and funding.
Note however, that it is acceptable to explicitly refer in the paper to the companies or organizations that provided datasets, hosted experiments or deployed solutions, if specifically necessary for understanding the work described in the paper.
Submitted work should be original. Simultaneous submissions to other conferences or journals is explicitly prohibited by ACM policies. However, technical reports or ArXiv disclosure prior to or simultaneous with RecSys submission, is allowed, provided they are not peer-reviewed. Please refer to the ACM Publication License Agreement for further details.
Please take note that the official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.
Important Dates
Abstract submission deadline: April 15th, 2019
Paper submission deadline: April 23rd, 2019
Author notification: June 24th, 2019
Camera-ready version deadline: July 22nd, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
RecSys 2019 is pleased to invite proposals for tutorials to be given in conjunction with the conference. The goal of the tutorials is to provide conference attendees, including early-career researchers and researchers crossing-over from related disciplines, with an opportunity to learn about recommender system concepts and techniques. Tutorials also serve as a venue to share presenters’ expertise with the global community of recommender system researchers and practitioners. Tutorials focus on specific topics including, but not limited to:
Introductions to recommender systems or to specific techniques (e.g., deep learning, feature engineering, tensorflow),
Evaluation of recommender systems (e.g., system-centric and user-centric evaluation, experimentation),
Designing user experiences and interactions (e.g., virtual assistants, chatbots, etc.),
Using different types of data (semantic web, graphs,) and media (text, images, video, speech) for building recommendations,
Ethical and legal aspects of recommender systems (e.g., privacy, fairness, accountability, transparency, and control of bias),
Recommender systems facing real-world challenges (e.g., large-scale recommender systems or stream-based recommendation),
Building and deploying recommender systems in specific domains (e.g., music, tourism, education, TV/video, jobs, enterprise, health, and/or fashion),
Recommender systems supporting decision making,
Recommendation for groups, tasks, or situations, including intent-aware recommender systems,
Eliciting and learning user preferences,
Recommender systems that take users’ emotional state, physical state, personality, trust, level-of-expertise, and/or cognitive readiness into account,
Sensors and recommender systems (including mobile recommender systems and wearables),
Intersections of recommender systems with other domains (e.g., information retrieval, machine learning, human computer interaction, or databases).
Recommender systems in new domains, such as e-government, smart cities and energy.
The length of your proposed tutorial should be commensurate with the presented materials and the projected interest of the RecSys community in the tutorial topic. We may work with accepted tutorial presenters to adjust the length of the tutorial, considering that tutorials may use up to two 90-minute slots, i.e. the length of the tutorials will be either 90 or 180 minutes.
We actively encourage both researchers and industry practitioners to submit tutorial proposals that target different levels of expertise and different interests. We also encourage the submission of hands-on tutorials, for instance through the use of notebooks that combine theoretical concepts with practical exercises.
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.
Tutorial length.
Motivation for proposing this tutorial (why is it important for RecSys).
Name, email address, and affiliation of tutorial instructor(s). Each listed presenter must present in person at the conference.
Detailed bulleted outline of the tutorial (this point should take the most space).
Targeted audience (introductory, intermediate, advanced) and prerequisite knowledge or skills.
Importance of the topic for the RecSys community.
Teaching experiences and history of prior tutorials by the presenter(s).
List of relevant publications by the presenter(s).
The following elements are not mandatory for the proposal, but encouraged:
A short explanation of relationship of the tutorial proposal to “trends” at past RecSys conferences.
A 2-minute video where the presenters introduce themselves and pitch their tutorial.
Statement that the materials (slides, readings, and/or code) used/mentioned in the tutorial will be publicly available after the tutorial.
Notebooks (e.g. iPython or Jupyter) or other interactive code that will be used during the course, if any.
Evaluation Criteria
Tutorial proposals will be reviewed according to: ability of the tutorial to contribute to strengthening the foundations of recommender system research, or to broadening the field to look at important new challenges and techniques, experience and skill of the presenter(s), and the value of any materials released with the tutorial for the community.
Important Dates
Tutorial proposal submission deadline: May 16th, 2019
Tutorial proposal notification: June 1st, 2019
Camera-ready tutorial summary deadline: July 22nd, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
Denis Parra, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile
Call for Workshop Proposals
RecSys 2019 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 discussing novel ideas as well as recent results of research in progress.
In 2019 our goal is to have a balanced workshop program which comprises workshop formats of different types and a combination of newly emerging, currently evolving, and historically understudied topics. Different full-day and half-day workshop formats are possible, for example:
Workshops with novel interactive workshop formats and a relatively small number of participants. Such workshop formats might for example target at the exploration of a certain topic during the workshop through a moderated discussion or breakout sessions, resulting in a draft paper or report to be completed and published after the workshop. Particular priority will be given to these formats which require the active involvement of the participants.
Workshops with the traditional workshop format on specialized topics; such workshops typically have their own paper submission and review processes. Proposals for continuations of existing workshop series are welcome, however, please include a brief statement on the necessity for the new edition, including a description of the outcomes of previous years and the expected novelty of this edition.
We encourage you to contact us by email to in advance with workshop ideas; we will work with prospective workshop organizers to help them design successful proposals. In particular for workshop proposals with novel interactive formats we are happy to assist you in further developing and implementing your ideas. Please contact us at least three weeks before the deadline.
We encourage both researchers and industry practitioners to submit proposals.
Proposal Format and Submission
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.
A short description of the workshop including the rationale for the workshop and how and why it fits the audience of RecSys. This description should include also the topic, format, and details about what type of submission is requested from prospective attendees. Please also add an explanation on how the workshop complements, rather than duplicates, the topics of the main conference.
Name, email address, and affiliation for workshop organizer(s) and a brief description of their experience in organizing such events.
Requested duration (half day or full day), and expected number of participants.
Description of workshop activities. Outline how the workshop will be organized and how the time will be spent. In particular, please sketch how you will engage participants to foster more interactivity and engagement during the workshop.
For more interactive workshop formats, also outline the process of selecting or inviting the participants.
Description of plans for promoting the workshop and disseminating the results.
History of prior workshops on this topic (e.g., including the number of submissions and attendees), if any.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability of the topic to contribute to the continued development of the field of recommender systems.
Level of complementarity of the topic to the main conference.
Clear plan for attracting submissions, making the workshop itself productive, and disseminating results.
Evidence that this plan will be successful.
Experience of the organizers.
Important Dates
Workshop proposal submission deadline: February 25th, 2019
Workshop proposal notification: March 11th, 2019
Camera-ready workshop summary deadline: July 22nd, 2019
Workshop dates: September 19th and 20th, 2019
Eample deadlines (workshop organizers are free to apply their own deadlines, although we encourage the organizers to follow the suggested deadlines):
Call for Papers publication: March 25th, 2019
Paper submission deadline: July 1st, 2019
Reviewer deadline: July 19th, 2019
Author notification: July 29th, 2019
Camera-ready version deadline: August 27th, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
The ACM Recommender Systems 2019 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 that they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their work to apply for this unique opportunity, which will allow them to share their work with their peers as well as with senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those have made some research progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes in their research plans. Typically, this means that they have defined their topic and have completed some research, but still have at least a year of research remaining before completing a dissertation (in many universities this corresponds to the dissertation proposal stage). The feedback from attendees in previous years has been very positive and the Doctoral Symposium has been considered very useful in providing research guidance.
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 excluding references) published in the conference proceedings. They will also present a poster of their work at the conference.
Symposium Format and Participation Expectations
Participants are expected to attend the entire symposium, including the dinner, and are also expected to attend the ACM RecSys 2019 conference. Accepted participants will come into consideration for travel support for the RecSys 2019 conference directly from the ACM.
The format of the symposium will be primarily student presentations supplemented by one or two panel sessions to provide advice and Q&A opportunities with senior researchers in the field. Student presentations will be structured to provide maximum feedback. In particular:
Presentations will be limited to 15 minutes, followed by 20-25 minutes for feedback and discussion;
Two of the symposium faculty will be assigned to provide “primary” feedback for each presenter; following this primary feedback there will be a period of open feedback from all participants;
Students will be expected to take notes for another participant so that each of you can focus on interacting during the discussion surrounding your presentation;
During the main conference, students will also present their dissertation work and plans in the form of a poster presentation.
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 research area.
Application Format and Submission
Applications are invited from graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research by a panel of established researchers.
Applications should include the following:
An extended abstract (see below).
A curriculum vitae.
A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation, including questions regarding your dissertation that you would like to ask your symposium mentors.
Submit these three items in a single PDF file to . Your contribution should be named lastname_ds.pdf, where lastname is your family name. The file must be no larger than 5 Mbytes. You should watch to make sure that you get an email confirming receipt from one of the Doctoral Symposium Chairs within a couple days of submission.
A brief letter of recommendation from your doctoral advisor or mentor focused on how your participation in the doctoral symposium will benefit your dissertation research.
Your doctoral advisor should send this letter directly to us at .
Extended Abstract
Prepare a four-page (excluding references) extended abstract of your thesis work in the two-column ACM SIG Proceedings Format. The extended abstract will be evaluated with regard to:
Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques (provide relevant citations).
Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues in recommender systems (clearly identify the problems you are trying to solve).
Rigor and validity of claims, argumentation, methodology, results, and interpretations.
Clarity and persuasiveness of expression.
Please write your extended abstract to the same quality standards as a regular RecSys submission. 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.
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 two weeks prior to the start of the conference. Submissions should contain no information or materials that are proprietary at publication time.
Selection Criteria
To provide maximum feedback to each student, participation in the doctoral symposium is limited. Selection is based on two broad criteria:
Value of the symposium to the student:
The degree to which the applicant is positioned to benefit from participation, including the student’s position in the doctoral process (the greatest benefit is for students with a developed research idea but much of the work yet undone).
The degree to which the student may otherwise lack access to a diverse set of feedback and input on his or her research plans (e.g., availability of local experts and advisors).
Value of the student’s participation to other students.
The quality of the extended abstract (as identified above), both as a model of excellent research and as an indication of the student’s potential in the field.
Diversity of participation, including diversity by institution, country, research topic and approach, and demographics. In general we will limit participation to one or two students per institution, depending on the number of applicants.
Evidence that the student will be an effective and active participant, providing feedback to others and helping to build a research network.
Application Checklist
Well in advance of the deadline:
Create your submission materials:
Write an extended abstract according to the ACM SIG Proceedings Format. The length of the abstract is 4 pages (excluding references). Note that the student is the sole author of the abstract. Supervisor(s) can be thanked in the acknowledgments.
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.
Test that your PDF prints correctly and that is it no larger than 5 Mbytes.
Submit it to .
Confirm that you receive an email from the Doctoral Symposium Chairs that you submission has been received.
Confirm that your advisor has sent a letter of recommendation.
Support
The Doctoral Symposium will offer registration waiver and some stipend to accepted students. The students who received the support will be requested to be part of the student volunteer cohort.
Important Dates
Doctoral symposium submission deadline: May 16th, 2019
Doctoral symposium submission notification: June 24th, 2019
Camera-ready abstract deadline: July 22nd, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
Martha Larson, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Call for Demos
Demos show implementations of novel, interesting, and important recommender systems’ concepts or applications. Allowing potential users to see and use a demo of a research work makes them excited about it – it makes the work real and tangible. Demos also allow developers from small start-ups to large industries to present new recommender ideas and get valuable feedback from the recommender systems community.
RecSys has an excellent history of being well-attended by industry representatives — past conferences have had attendees and presenters from Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Criteo, Pandora, Spotify, etc. The blend of industry and academic attention provides an excellent environment to demonstrate and discuss latest inventions or ideas.
We invite demonstrations relevant to 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 user experiments
Recommender platforms
Format and Submission
Demos should be described in PDF format, in English, formatted according to the ACM Proceedings template, viewable on any platform and should be 2 pages including references. Submit the description via EasyChair.
The description of the demo must include the following:
An overview of the algorithm or system that is the core of the demo, including citations to any publications that support the work.
A discussion of the purpose and the novelty of the demo.
A description of the required setup. If the system will feature an installable component (e.g., mobile app) or website for users to use throughout or after the conference, please mention this.
A link to a narrated screen capture of your system in action, ideally a video. (This section will be removed for camera-ready version of accepted contributions.)
Demos must not be under review in any other conference at the time of submission and must contain novel contributions. All submissions will be single-blind peer reviewed. This means that submissions should include information identifying the authors and their organization.
Note: At least one of the authors of each accepted demo is required to attend the conference. Furthermore, accepted contributions will have to display a poster along with their demo.
The camera-ready version of the 2-page submission will be included in the main conference proceedings.
Important Dates
Demo submission deadline: June 2nd, 2019
Demo notification: June 17th, 2019
Camera-ready demo summary deadline: July 22nd, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
Poster and Demo Chairs
Marko Tkalcic, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
The Late-Breaking Results track of RecSys offers an opportunity for presenting new, preliminary results and speculative or innovative work in progress. Accepted contributions for this track will be presented in a poster session, where the informal setting 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.
Format and Submission
All submissions will be double-blind and peer reviewed. Late-breaking results must not be under review in any other conference at the time of submission and must contain novel contributions. This means that submissions must not include information identifying the authors or their organization. Specifically, do not include the authors’ names and affiliations, and anonymize self-citations, acknowledgments, and funding sources.
Results should be described in PDF format, in English, formatted according to the SIGCHI Extended Abstract template (source files, Overleaf template), viewable on any platform and should be exactly five pages including references. Submit the paper via EasyChair.
In addition to the five-page submission, accepted authors will be asked to create a poster to be displayed at the conference in a dedicated poster area, and present their work during the poster session.
The camera-ready version of the five-page extended abstract will be included in separate CEUR proceedings.
Note: At least one of the authors of each accepted poster is required to attend the conference.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: July 1st, 2019
Notification: July 22nd, 2019
Camera-ready deadline: August 12th, 2019
Deadlines refer to 23:59 (11:59pm) in the AoE (Anywhere on Earth) time zone.
Poster and Demo Chairs
Marko Tkalcic, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
We are pleased to invite you to participate in the 13th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2019), the premier venue for research and applications of recommendation technologies. ACM RecSys 2019 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from September 16th to September 20th, 2019. The conference will continue RecSys’ practice of connecting the research and practitioner communities to exchange ideas, discuss problems, and share solutions.
Industry practitioners are invited to submit talk proposals to the RecSys conference industry track. This track seeks presentations about challenges and practical solutions to significant real-world issues faced by industry practitioners. We encourage submissions that describe substantial challenges that were overlooked by the research community and your promising new approaches that could foster discussion and collaboration. We also recognize that diverse speaker backgrounds and topics facilitate richer discussions at the conference, therefore we especially encourage women and under-represented colleagues to submit talk proposals.
Examples of talk topics include, but are not limited to:
Challenges faced by practitioners that are under-studied in the research community and practical solutions
Novel techniques that solve significant issues in practice
Case studies of real-world implementations
Evaluation metrics and studies
Field and user studies
Lessons learned from real world deployments
Novel recommender system applications
Fairness and bias of recommender systems
Note that although industry talks are solicited separately, we expect to create a combined single track program from both accepted papers and industry talks in RecSys 2019. Furthermore, authors of the selected proposals will additionally have the opportunity to present a poster at the conference poster sessions.
Proposal Format and Submission
We are accepting proposals for Industry talks under 20min (exact length TBD).
Proposals must include the following:
Title and abstract of the proposal presentation (2 page)
Short CV of the presenter(s) (up to 300 words)
Talk proposals should be emailed to .
Important Dates
Proposal submission deadline: May 7th, 2019
Notification: July 9th, 2019
Deadline for 1-page abstract to be included in the conference proceedings: July 22nd, 2019
