Have an idea for an ACM TORS Special Issue? What are you waiting for?

Is there a topic in recommender systems that you think deserves more attention? ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (TORS) welcomes Special Issue proposals year-round.

A Special Issue brings together a focused set of papers, usually six to eight, around a timely research theme. It can give an emerging area a dedicated venue and bring together researchers working on related questions. For the researchers who lead it, it is also an opportunity to help develop a research community around a topic they care about.

Past and current Special Issues

TORS Special Issues cover a broad range of topics. Recent calls have included Challenges in Modern Multimodal Recommender Systems, Music Recommender Systems, and New Directions for News Recommender Systems. Other Special Issues have addressed generative models, tourism, user interaction design for human-centered recommender systems, recommender systems in industry, recommender systems for good, large language models, trustworthy recommender systems, causal inference, and recommender systems evaluation.

Putting together a proposal

Proposals usually come from a team of two to four experienced researchers who will serve as Guest Editors. The proposal should be submitted as a PDF to the TORS Editors-in-Chief at tors-eics@ acm.org and should include:

• The title, scope, and topics of the proposed issue
• Why the topic is timely
• Examples of recent papers that illustrate the kind of work the issue could attract
• The Guest Editors and their relevant scientific and organizational experience
• Researchers or groups who have expressed interest in the topic
• A proposed timeline

The TORS Editorial Board discusses each proposal and may ask the proposers to refine it before making a decision.

What Guest Editors do

Once a proposal is accepted, the Guest Editors take an active role in running the Special Issue. They act much like Associate Editors: they select reviewers, help keep the review process moving, and make recommendations on whether individual papers should be accepted or rejected. They also write a short preface of up to six pages introducing the topic and the papers in the issue.

Ready to propose?

If you see a research community forming around a topic—through new workshops, tutorials, conference tracks, or a growing body of publications—it may be a good candidate for a TORS Special Issue.