Cited by 413Recommender Systems and TechniquesInformation Retrieval and Search BehaviorAdvanced Bandit Algorithms Research

Self-supervised learning for recommender systems: A survey

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Yu, Junliang, Yin, Hongzhi, Xia, Xin, Chen, Tong, Li, Jundong, Huang, Zi·2024·IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering

Abstract

In recent years, neural architecture-based recommender systems have achieved tremendous success, but they still fall short of expectation when dealing with highly sparse data. Self-supervised learning (SSL), as an emerging technique for learning from unlabeled data, has attracted considerable attention as a potential solution to this issue. This survey paper presents a systematic and timely review of research efforts on self-supervised recommendation (SSR). Specifically, we propose an exclusive definition of SSR, on top of which we develop a comprehensive taxonomy to divide existing SSR methods into four categories: contrastive, generative, predictive, and hybrid. For each category, we elucidate its concept and formulation, the involved methods, as well as its pros and cons. Furthermore, to facilitate empirical comparison, we release an open-source library SELFRec (https://github.com/Coder-Yu/SELFRec), which incorporates a wide range of SSR models and benchmark datasets. Through rigorous experiments using this library, we derive and report some significant findings regarding the selection of self-supervised signals for enhancing recommendation. Finally, we shed light on the limitations in the current research and outline the future research directions.

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Crossref · 10.1109/tkde.2023.3282907

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Authors
Yu, J., Yin, H., Xia, X., Chen, T., Li, J., & Huang, Z.
Affiliations
  • The University of Queensland (AU)
  • University of Virginia (US)
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Published
2024-01
Volume
36
Issue
1
Pages
335-355
ISSN
  • 1041-4347 (ISSN-L)
  • 1558-2191
  • 2326-3865
OpenAlex
W4379382506
Cited by
413
References
132
Citations by year
2026: 87 · 2025: 163 · 2024: 114 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 5
FWCI
95.75
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Funders
  • ARC Future Fellowship (FT210100624)
  • ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods (IC200100022)
  • Discovery Project (DP190101985)
  • Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE230101033)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Recommender Systems and Techniques
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Retrieval and Search Behavior
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Advanced Bandit Algorithms Research
Keywords
self-supervised learning, recommender systems, data sparsity, contrastive learning, generative models, prediction model, hybrid model, benchmark dataset

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