[Asis-l] 2nd ICDM Workshop on Semantics-Enabled Recommender Systems (SERecSys 2017)

[Ludovico Boratto]

*2nd Workshop on Semantics-Enabled Recommender Systems (SERecSys 2017)*
*In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM
2017)*
New Orleans, USA - November 18, 2017


*CALL FOR PAPERS*
A recommender system is designed to suggest items that are expected to
interest a user. In order to filter the items and produce the
recommendation, Data Mining techniques are largely employed. Among the most
popular recommendation approaches in the literature and in real-world
applications (e.g., e-commerce websites) are the so-called content-based
recommender systems. Content-based recommender systems suggest to users
items that are similar to those they previously evaluated. The early
systems used relatively simple retrieval models, such as the Vector Space
Model, with the basic TF-IDF weighting.

Simple (word-based) interest descriptions may fall short both because of
semantic ambiguity and because they lack of generality. Recently,
content-based recommender systems evolved and started employing external
knowledge sources (e.g., ontologies) to improve accuracy and scope of
recommendations.

More recent approaches have been based on deep learning. Other approaches
have employed word embeddings in the recommendation process. Among the best
known and high-performance implementations following these lines of
research we mention Google’s word2vec.

Moreover, semantic technologies will soon find a connection with cognitive
computing, cooperating in the definition of the so-called cognitive
recommender systems. Given the rapid advances of Semantic Technologies,
there is still a large number of options for recommender systems to take
advantage of semantics.

Our workshop will solicit contributions in all topics related to employing
Semantic Technologies in Recommender Systems, focused (but not limited) to
the following list:
- Novel approaches to user profiling in recommender systems that model
behavior with semantic technologies;
- Cognitive recommender systems;
- Content-based recommendation algorithms that employ novel uses of
semantic technologies;
- Recommendation explanation using semantic technologies;
- Generation of novel, diverse, and serendipitous recommendations using
semantic technologies;
- Hybrid recommender systems that combine semantic technologies with other
recommendation techniques (e.g, collaborative);
- Group-based approaches that use semantic technologies to describe the
group preferences or to generate recommendations.

*IMPORTANT DATES*
- Paper submission: August 7, 2017
- Notification of acceptance: September 4, 2017
- Camera-ready version submission: September 9, 2017
- Workshop date: November 18, 2017

*TYPES OF CONTRIBUTIONS*
We will consider three different submission types, all in the IEEE 2-column
format: regular (8 pages), short (4 pages) and extended abstracts (2 pages).

*Research and position papers* (regular or short) should be clearly placed
with respect to the state of the art and state the contribution of the
proposal in the domain of application, even if presenting preliminary
results. In particular, research papers should describe the methodology in
detail, experiments should be repeatable, and a comparison with the
existing approaches in the literature should be made where possible.
Position papers should introduce novel point of views in the workshop
topics or summarize the experience of a researcher or a group in the field.

*Practice and experience reports* (short) should present in detail the
real-world scenarios in which Semantic Technologies are employed for
recommendation purposes.

*Demo proposals* (extended abstract) should present the details of a
prototype or complete application that employs Semantic Technologies in
Recommender Systems. The systems will be demonstrated to the workshop
attendees.

The reviewing process will be coordinated by the organizers. Each paper
will receive three reviews: two externals to the organizing committee and
one internal. The external reviewers will be contacted according to their
expertise in the paper topic.

*PROCEEDINGS*
Accepted papers will be included in the IEEE ICDM 2017 Workshops
Proceedings volume published by IEEE Computer Society Press, and will also
be included in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The workshop proceedings
will be in a CD separated from the CD of the main conference. The CD is
produced by IEEE Conference Publishing Services (CPS).
Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version in
a journal special issue.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*
All papers must be formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society
proceedings manuscript style, following IEEE ICDM 2017 submission
guidelines available at http://icdm2017.bigke.org/.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format, electronically, using the
CyberChair submission system, available at:
https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2017/icdm17/scripts/ws_submit.php?subarea=SP

*INVITED SPEAKER*
Dr. Huzefa Rangwala (George Mason University, USA)

*CONTACTS*
Website: http://serecsys.di.uniroma1.it/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/serecsys/
For general enquires regarding the workshop, send an email to
serecsys at di.uniroma1.it

*ORGANIZERS*
Ludovico Boratto (EURECAT, Spain)
Salvatore Carta (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Giovanni Stilo (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)