[kdd] Last CFP: ACM RecSys 2011 Workshop on Novelty and Diversity in Recommender Systems (DiveRS 2011)

[Pablo Castells]

----------------- Last Call for Papers - DiveRS 2011 -----------------
                 International ACM RecSys Workshop on
      Novelty and Diversity in Recommender Systems - DiveRS 2011
                   Chicago, IL, USA, 23 October 2011
                    http://ir.ii.uam.es/divers2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* Submission deadline: 25 July 2011 *

A special issue of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Information Systems and
Technology in the scope of the workshop will be announced after the
conference, to which the authors of accepted submissions will be invited to
submit an extended version of their paper.

Scope
-----

Most research and development efforts in the Recommender Systems field have
been focused on accuracy in predicting and matching user interests. However
there is a growing realization that there is more than accuracy to the
practical effectiveness and added-value of recommendation. In particular,
novelty and diversity have been identified as key dimensions of
recommendation utility in real scenarios, and a fundamental research
direction to keep making progress in the field. Novelty is indeed essential
to recommendation: in many, if not most scenarios, the whole point of
recommendation is inherently linked to a notion of discovery, as
recommendation makes most sense when it exposes the user to a relevant
experience that she would not have found, or thought of by herself –obvious,
however accurate recommendations are generally of little use. Not only does
a varied recommendation provide in itself for a richer user experience.
Given the inherent uncertainty in user interest prediction –since it is
based on implicit, incomplete evidence of interests, where the latter are
moreover subject to change–, avoiding a too narrow array of choice is
generally a good approach to enhance the chances that the user is pleased by
at least some recommended item. Sales diversity may enhance businesses as
well, leveraging revenues from market niches. It is easy to increase novelty
and diversity by giving up accuracy; the challenge is to enhance these
aspects while still achieving a fair match of the user's interests. The goal
is thus generally to enhance the balance in this trade-off, rather than just
a diversity or novelty increase.

DiveRS 2011 aims to gather researchers and practitioners interested in the
role of novelty and diversity in recommender systems. The workshop seeks to
advance towards a better understanding of what novelty and diversity are,
how they can improve the effectiveness of recommendation methods and the
utility of their outputs. We aim to identify open problems, relevant
research directions, and opportunities for innovation in the recommendation
business. The workshop seeks to stir further interest for these topics in
the community, and stimulate the research and progress in this area.

The workshop welcomes the participation of researchers, students, and
practitioners in the Recommender Systems community and related areas such as
User Modeling, Information Retrieval, Data Mining, Machine Learning, and
Human-Computer Interaction, in different application domains, working on or
interested in the workshop topics.

Topics
------

We invite the submission of papers reporting original research, studies,
advances, experiences, or work in progress in the scope of novelty and
diversity in Recommender Systems. The topics the workshop seeks to address
include –though need not be limited to– the following:

* Modeling novelty and diversity in recommender systems
  - Theoretical foundation for novelty and diversity
  - Recommendation novelty and diversity models
  - Popularity, risk, surprisal, serendipity, freshness, discovery
  - Link to diversity models in Information Retrieval
* Novelty and diversity enhancement
  - Diversification methods
  - Recommendation of long-tail and difficult items, cold-start problem
  - Individual vs. global diversity
  - Machine Learning for novelty and diversity
* Novelty and diversity across recommendations
  - Novelty and diversity in sequential recommendation
  - Novelty and diversity in interactive recommendation
  - Aggregate diversity
  - Novelty and diversity in time and context
  - Novelty and trust
* Novelty and diversity evaluation
  - Experimental methodologies and design
  - Novelty and diversity metrics
  - Datasets
  - User studies
* Business perspective on novelty and diversity

Keynote
-------

Neil J. Hurley from University College, Dublin, will be our invited speaker
with a talk entitled "Towards Diverse Recommendation".

Submission
----------

Three submission types are accepted: full technical papers of up to 8 pages,
short technical papers up to 4 pages, and short position papers up to 4
pages. Each paper will be evaluated by at least two reviewers from the
Programme Committee. The papers will be evaluated for their originality,
contribution significance, soundness, clarity, and overall quality. Within a
required quality standard, position papers will be appreciated for
presenting new perspectives and insights, and their potential for provoking
thought and stimulating discussion.

All submissions shall adhere to the standard ACM SIG proceedings format:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates. The accepted
papers will be published in a specific volume for the workshop in the ACM
Proceedings series.

Submissions shall be sent as a pdf file through the online submission system
is now open at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=divers2011.

A special issue of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Information Systems and
Technology in the scope of the workshop is in preparation, to which the
authors of accepted submissions will be invited to submit an extended
version of their paper.

Important dates
---------------

Paper submission deadline: 25 July 2011
Author notification:       19 August 2011
Camera ready version due:  12 September 2011
DiveRS 2011 workshop:      23 October 2011

Organizers
----------

Pablo Castells, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Jun Wang, University College London, UK
Rubén Lara, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo, Spain
Dell Zhang, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Contact email: divers2011.workshop at gmail.com

More info at: http://ir.ii.uam.es/divers2011
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