Scholars' Perceptions of Relevance in Bibliography-based People Recommender System

dc.contributor.authorOlshannikova, Ekaterina
dc.contributor.authorOlsson, Thomas
dc.contributor.authorHuhtamäki, Jukka
dc.contributor.authorYao, Peng
dc.date.accessioned2019-05-23T03:58:47Z
dc.date.available2019-05-23T03:58:47Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractCollaboration and social networking are increasingly important for academics, yet identifying relevant collaborators requires remarkable effort. While there are various networking services optimized for seeking similarities between the users, the scholarly motive of producing new knowledge calls for assistance in identifying people with complementary qualities. However, there is little empirical understanding of how academics perceive relevance, complementarity, and diversity of individuals in their profession and how these concepts can be optimally embedded in social matching systems. This paper aims to support the development of diversity-enhancing people recommender systems by exploring senior researchers’ perceptions of recommended other scholars at different levels on a similar–different continuum. To conduct the study, we built a recommender system based on topic modeling of scholars’ publications in the DBLP computer science bibliography. A study of 18 senior researchers comprised a controlled experiment and semi-structured interviewing, focusing on their subjective perceptions regarding relevance, similarity, and familiarity of the given recommendations, as well as participants’ readiness to interact with the recommended people. The study implies that the homophily bias (behavioral tendency to select similar others) is strong despite the recognized need for complementarity. While the experiment indicated consistent and significant differences between the perceived relevance of most similar vs. other levels, the interview results imply that the evaluation of the relevance of people recommendations is complex and multifaceted. Despite the inherent bias in selection, the participants could identify highly interesting collaboration opportunities on all levels of similarity.en
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s10606-019-09349-w
dc.identifier.pissnISSN 0925-9724
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSpringer, London
dc.relation.ispartofComputer Supported Cooperative Work - ECSCW 2019: Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
dc.relation.ispartofseriesECSCW
dc.titleScholars' Perceptions of Relevance in Bibliography-based People Recommender Systemen
dc.typeText/Journal Article
gi.conference.date8 - 12 June 2019
gi.conference.locationSalzburg, Austria
gi.conference.sessiontitleFull Papers
mci.conference.reviewfull

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