@article {margaris-IJBDI-2019-b,
	title = {Improving collaborative filtering{\textquoteright}s rating prediction accuracy by considering users{\textquoteright} dynamic rating variability},
	journal = {International Journal of Big Data Intelligence},
	volume = {7},
	year = {2020},
	chapter = {59--71},
	abstract = {<p>Users that populate ratings databases, follow different marking practices, in the sense that some are stricter, while others are more lenient. Similarly, users{\textquoteright} rating practices may also differ in rating variability, in the sense that some users may be entering ratings close to their mean, while other users may be entering more extreme ratings, close to the limits of the rating scale. While this aspect has been recently addressed through the computation and exploitation of an overall rating variability measure per user, the fact that user rating practices may vary along the user{\textquoteright}s rating history time axis may render the use of the overall rating variability measure inappropriate for performing the rating prediction adjustment. In this work, we (1) propose an algorithm that considers two variability metrics per user, the global (overall) and the local one, with the latter representing the user{\textquoteright}s variability at prediction time, (2) present alternative methods for computing a user{\textquoteright}s local variability and (3) evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of rating prediction quality and compare it against the state-of-the-art algorithm that employs a single variability metric in the rating prediction computation process.</p>
},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Cosine Similarity, Evaluation, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, prediction accuracy, users{\textquoteright} ratings dynamic variability},
	doi = {10.1504/ijbdi.2020.107373},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Costas Vassilakis}
}
@article {margaris-IJBDI-2019-a,
	title = {Improving collaborative filtering{\textquoteright}s rating prediction coverage in sparse datasets by exploiting the {\textquotedblleft}friend of a friend{\textquotedblright} concept},
	journal = {International Journal of Big Data Intelligence},
	volume = {7},
	year = {2020},
	chapter = {47},
	abstract = {<p>Collaborative filtering computes personalized recommendations by taking into account ratings expressed by users. Collaborative filtering algorithms firstly identify people having similar tastes, by examining the likeness of already entered ratings. Users with highly similar tastes are termed {\textquotedblleft}near neighbours{\textquotedblright} and recommendations for a user are based on her near neighbours{\textquoteright} ratings. However, for a number of users no near neighbours can be found, a problem termed as the {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright} problem. This problem is more intense in sparse datasets, i.e. datasets with relatively small number of ratings, compared to the number of users and items. In this work, we propose an algorithm for alleviating this problem by exploiting the friend of a friend (FOAF) concept. The proposed algorithm, CFfoaf, has been evaluated against eight widely used sparse datasets and under two widely used collaborative filtering correlation metrics, namely the Pearson Correlation Coefficient and the Cosine Similarity and has been proven to be particularly effective in increasing the percentage of users for which personalized recommendations can be formulated in the context of sparse datasets, while at the same time improving rating prediction quality.</p>
},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Cosine Similarity, Evaluation, friend-of-a-friend, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, prediction accuracy, Recommender Systems, Sparse Datasets},
	issn = {2053-1389},
	doi = {10.1504/ijbdi.2020.106178},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Costas Vassilakis}
}
@conference {margaris_iisa2019_VNNs,
	title = {Improving Collaborative Filtering{\textquoteright}s Rating Prediction Coverage in Sparse Datasets through the Introduction of Virtual Near Neighbors},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA2019)},
	year = {2019},
	month = {jul},
	abstract = {Collaborative filtering creates personalized recommendations by considering ratings entered by users. Collaborative filtering algorithms initially detect users whose likings are alike, by ex-ploring the similarity between ratings that have insofar been submitted. Users having a high degree of similarity regarding their ratings are termed near neighbors, and in order to formu-late a recommendation for a user, her near neighbors{\textquoteright} ratings are extracted and form the basis for the recommendation. Col-laborative filtering algorithms however exhibit the problem commonly referred to as {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright}: this pertains to the case where for some users no near neighbors can be identified, and hence no personalized recommendations can be computed. The {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright} problem is more severe in sparse datasets, i.e. datasets where the number of ratings is small, compared to the number of items and users. In this paper, we address the {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright} problem by introducing the concept of virtual near neighbors and a related algorithm for their creation on the basis of the existing ones. We evaluate the proposed algorithm, which is termed as CFVNN, using eight widely used datasets and consid-ering two correlation metrics which are widely used in Collabo-rative Filtering research, namely the Pearson Correlation Coef-ficient and the Cosine Similarity. The results show that the pro-posed algorithm considerably leverages the capability of a Col-laborative Filtering system to compute personalized recommen-dations in the context of sparse datasets, tackling thus efficiently the {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright} problem. In parallel, the CFVNN algorithm achieves improvements in rating prediction quality, as this is expressed through the Mean Absolute Error and the Root Mean Square Error metrics.},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Cosine Similarity, Evaluation, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Sparse Datasets, Virtual Near Neighbors},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Dionysios Vasilopoulos and Costas Vassilakis and Dimitris Spiliotopoulos}
}
@conference {716,
	title = {Improving Collaborative Filtering{\textquoteright}s Rating Prediction Quality by Exploiting the Item Adoption Eagerness Information},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence},
	year = {2019},
	publisher = {ACM},
	organization = {ACM},
	abstract = {Collaborative filtering computes personalized recommendations by taking into account ratings expressed by users. Collaborative filtering algorithms firstly identify people having similar tastes, who are termed as {\textquotedblleft}near neighbors" and recommendations for a user, are based on his near neighbors{\textquoteright} ratings. On the other hand, people exhibit different levels of eagerness to adopt new products: according to this characteristic, there is a set of users, termed as {\textquotedblleft}Early Adopters", who are prone to start using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available, in contrast to the majority of users, who prefer to start using items once they reach maturity; this important aspect of user behavior is not taken into account by existing algorithms. In this work, we (1) propose an algorithm that considers the eagerness shown by users to adopt products, aiming to improve rating prediction quality and (2) evaluate the proposed algorithm against seven widely used datasets.},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Cosine Similarity, Evaluation, item adoption eagerness, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, rating prediction quality},
	isbn = {978-1-4503-6934-3},
	doi = {10.1145/3350546.3352544},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Dimitris Spiliotopoulos and Costas Vassilakis}
}
@conference {Margaris_2019_asonam,
	title = {Social Relations versus Near Neighbours: Reliable Recommenders in Limited Information Social Network Collaborative Filtering for Online Advertising},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2019)},
	year = {2019},
	month = {aug},
	abstract = {Online advertising benefits by recommender systems since the latter analyse reviews and rating of products, providing useful insight of the buyer perception of products and services. When traditional recommender system information is enriched with social network information, more successful recommendations are produced, since more users{\textquoteright} aspects are taken into consid-eration. However, social network information may be unavaila-ble since some users may not have social network accounts or may not consent to their use for recommendations, while rating data may be unavailable due to the cold start phenomenon. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that combines limited col-laborative filtering information, comprised only of users{\textquoteright} ratings on items, with limited social network information, com-prised only of users{\textquoteright} social relations, in order to improve (1) prediction accuracy and (2) prediction coverage in collaborative filtering recommender systems, at the same time. The proposed algorithm considerably improves rating prediction accuracy and coverage, while it can be easily integrated in recommender systems.},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Evaluation, Limited Information, Near Neighbours, Online Advertising, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Social Networks},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Dimitris Spiliotopoulos and Costas Vassilakis}
}
@conference {margarisDatacom2018a,
	title = {Improving Collaborative Filtering{\textquoteright}s Rating Prediction Accuracy by Considering Users{\textquoteright} Rating Variability},
	booktitle = {2018 IEEE 16th Intl Conf on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 16th Intl Conf on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, 4th Intl Conf on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and Cyber Science and Technology Congress(DASC/PiCom/DataCom/CyberSciTech)},
	year = {2018},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	organization = {IEEE},
	abstract = {When rating predictions are computed in user-user collaborative filtering, each individual rating is typically adjusted by the mean of the ratings entered by the specific user. This practice takes into account the fact that users follow different rating practices, in the sense that some are stricter when rating items, while others are more lenient. However, users{\textquoteright} rating practices may also differ in rating variability, in the sense that some user may be entering ratings close to her mean, while another user may be entering more extreme ratings, close to the limits of the rating scale. In this work, we (1) propose an algorithm that considers users{\textquoteright} ratings variability in the rating prediction computation process, aiming to improve rating prediction quality and (2) evaluate the proposed algorithm against seven widely used datasets considering three widely used variability measures and two user similarity metrics. The proposed algorithm, using the {\textquotedblleft}mean absolute deviation around the mean{\textquotedblright} variability measure, has been found to intro-duce considerable gains in rating prediction accuracy, in every dataset and under both user similarity metrics tested.},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Cosine Similarity, Evaluation, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Users{\textquoteright} Ratings Variability},
	doi = {10.1109/DASC/PiCom/DataCom/CyberSciTec.2018.00145},
	url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8512012},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Costas Vassilakis}
}
@conference {margarisDatacom2018b,
	title = {Improving Collaborative Filtering{\textquoteright}s Rating Prediction Coverage in Sparse Datasets by Exploiting User Dissimilarity},
	booktitle = {2018 IEEE 16th Intl Conf on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 16th Intl Conf on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing, 4th Intl Conf on Big Data Intelligence and Computing and Cyber Science and Technology Congress(DASC/PiCom/DataCom/CyberSciTech)},
	year = {2018},
	month = {aug},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	organization = {IEEE},
	abstract = {Collaborative filtering systems analyze the ratings databases to identify users with similar likings and preferences, termed as near neighbors, and then generate rating predictions for a user by examining the ratings of his near neighbors for items that the user has not yet rated; based on rating predictions, recommenda-tions are then formulated. However, these systems are known to exhibit the {\textquotedblleft}gray sheep{\textquotedblright} problem, i.e. the situation where no near neighbors can be identified for a number of users, and hence no recommendation can be formulated for them. This problem is more intense in sparse datasets, i.e. datasets with relatively small number of ratings, compared to the number of users and items. In this work, we propose a method for alleviating this problem by exploiting user dissimilarity, under the assumption that if some users have exhibited opposing preferences in the past, they are likely to do so in the future. The proposed method has been eval-uated against seven widely used datasets and has been proven to be particularly effective in increasing the percentage of users for which personalized recommendations can be formulated in the context of sparse datasets, while at the same time maintaining or slightly improving rating prediction quality.},
	keywords = {collaborative filtering, Evaluation, Negative Correlation, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, Sparse Datasets, User-User Correlation},
	doi = {10.1109/dasc/picom/datacom/cyberscitec.2018.00150},
	url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8512017},
	author = {Dionisis Margaris and Costas Vassilakis}
}
