HCRS@WWW 2027

The 3rd Workshop on Human-Centered Recommender Systems (HCRS@WWW 2027) has been proposed as an in-person half-day afternoon workshop at The Web Conference 2027 (ACM Web 2027), to be held May 10–14, 2027 in Dublin, Ireland. The workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum for human-centered recommendation in the generative AI era, and welcomes original research papers that explore technical innovations, evaluation methodologies, and governance mechanisms for keeping agent-mediated recommendation accountable to people.

Scope and Topics

The workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum for human-centered recommendation in the generative AI era. By fostering dialogue among recommender systems, HCI, information retrieval, AI safety, and social computing, it aims to connect technical advances with meaningful human outcomes. While the underlying agent architectures continue to evolve rapidly, our emphasis is on how they shape recommendation and affect users, creators, communities, and platforms.

We welcome empirical, theoretical, and position papers, as well as demos, datasets, and user studies addressing the following themes in concrete recommendation settings:

Agency: Human control over goals and delegation

Extending human capabilities while preserving meaningful control over preference representation, memory, tools, permissions, and consequential actions. Topics include:

  • Personal agents for discovery and decision support.
  • Goal expression, revision, and mixed-initiative interaction.
  • User control of memory, tools, data, and permissions.
  • Consent, contestability, correction, and human override.
  • Recommendations interpreted jointly by people and agents.
  • Platform access, competition, and user choice.

Alignment: Systems aligned with human intentions and values

Keeping user-facing agents and self-evolving recommendation systems responsive to human intentions through feedback, verification, and accountable oversight. Topics include:

  • Preference elicitation under ambiguity, conflict, and drift.
  • Human and agent feedback, rubrics, and reward models.
  • Verified agent harnesses for recommender-system development and deployment.
  • Provenance, revision, deletion, and contamination of user and agent memory.
  • Safe tool use, reflection, coordination, and self-improvement in recommendation pipelines.
  • Reward hacking, capability drift, and failed exploration in adaptive recommender systems.
  • Reproducibility, privacy, fairness, and accountable audits of recommender systems.

Long-term Value: Benefits for people and ecosystems over time

Moving beyond one-step relevance and short-term engagement to assess cumulative effects on users, creators, communities, and platforms. Topics include:

  • Long-horizon user modeling and preference formation.
  • Satisfaction, learning, well-being, and autonomy.
  • Continual adaptation and delayed feedback.
  • Value for users, creators, and communities.
  • Simulation-based and longitudinal evaluation.
  • Process evaluation, attribution, and red teaming.
  • Manipulation, dependency, filter bubbles, and harm.

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions of 4–8 pages, with unlimited pages allowed for references, covering the topics above. Manuscripts will be reviewed by the program committee through a single-blind review process, meaning that authors’ names do not need to be anonymized. Evaluation criteria are adapted to each contribution type, including relevance to the workshop, originality, soundness, clarity, and potential value to the human-centered recommendation community. Accepted submissions will be presented either as oral talks or posters during the workshop. A Best Paper Award will be presented.

Publication Policy

Papers accepted by the workshop can be included in the Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2027, subject to meeting the camera-ready timeline. Workshop papers that have been previously published or are under review for another journal, conference or workshop should not be considered for publication but can be presented in a non-archival workshop.

Paper Format

All submissions must be in English and must adhere to the ACM Web Conference 2027 template and format (also available in Overleaf), with the following options: 

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  • CCS class and keywords sections are optional.
  • Papers must be between 4 and 8 pages, with unlimited pages allowed for references.

Submission Portal

Submissions will be made through OpenReview. The submission portal link will be published here once the workshop proposal is accepted and the OpenReview group is created.

Important Dates

  • ★ Submission Deadline: January 4, 2027
  • ★ Paper Acceptance Notification: February 1, 2027
  • ★ Camera-Ready Submission: February 16, 2027
  • ★ May 10–14, 2027: The Web Conference 2027, Dublin, Ireland — the workshop will be held as an in-person half-day afternoon session on one of these dates (specific day TBA).

Timezone: Anywhere On Earth (UTC-12) for paper deadlines; session times will be announced in IST (Irish Standard Time, UTC+1).

We look forward to your contributions and to fostering discussions on creating ethical, user-friendly, and socially responsible recommender systems in the generative AI era.