Title: ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems: Inaugural Issue Editorial
Abstract: Recommender systems have become a ubiquitous part of our digital lives.Every day we receive suggestions about what to shop online, which video series to watch, what news to read, or which people to follow on social media.With their suggestions, these systems help us find relevant things when there is just too much information available or when there are too many alternatives to choose from.Over the past 25 years, recommender systems have become a research field of their own, transcending early roots in information retrieval and other areas of computer science.Indeed, building a successful recommender system in practice requires the cooperation of people with different backgrounds, from machine learning and data science experts to human-computer interaction and business professionals.Given the multi-faceted nature of recommender systems, research in this area has traditionally been scattered, with various publication outlets in different scientific subfields.This is why we launched ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (ACM TORS).With this new journal, our goal is to be a home and preferred outlet for the latest high-quality research on the various aspects of recommender systems, from algorithms to the user experience, to questions of the impact and value of such systems.The journal welcomes submissions of various types, from original research works, to survey papers, reproducibility studies, industry reports, and opinion pieces.This inaugural issue contains a selection of articles on the latest research in our area.Several additional articles have already been accepted for future issues, and we are happy to observe that our research area is flourishing and continuously growing.The idea of a journal entirely devoted to recommender systems has been around for several years.Making this idea a reality would not have been possible without the support of many people.First, there was tremendous support from our research community, both from academia and industry, and from the Steering Committee of the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems.We are thankful that with this support ACM TORS can rely on an extraordinary board of Associate Editors, involving many top-notch international experts who have shaped the entire field over the years.Moreover, many very senior colleagues immediately volunteered to help as part of the board of Distinguished Reviewers, and researchers around the world have already served as reviewers for the articles we have received so far.Our specific thanks go to Joseph A. Konstan, who helped us in several important ways throughout the process, and to Joeran Beel, who is not only the Information Director of ACM TORS but also played an important role when we started our journey.We also thank the people at ACM and their supporting organizations for their help in ramping up this journal.This includes Laura Lander, Shayla Poling, and Starratt Scheetz, who were always there to deal with the questions and inquiries that have come up over the months.Finally, we thank you, the readers of ACM TORS.We are hoping that you will follow the subsequent issues of the journal and that you will enjoy the breadth and variety of the works that we will publish on the various facets of recommender systems research.We are open to your feedback to continuously improve the journal, and we hope that you may consider contributing to the journal in the future.