RecExp: A Semantic Recommender System with Explanation Based on Heterogeneous Information Network

In recent years, there is a surge of research on recommender system to alleviate the information overload. Many recommendation techniques have been proposed and they have achieved great successes in many applications. However, the explanation of recommendation results is an important but seldom addressed problem. In this paper, we organize the objects and relations in a recommender system with a heterogeneous information network, which integrates more informations and contains rich semantics. Then we employ a semantic meta path based personalized recommendation model and design a recommender system with explanation, called RecExp. The RecExp system has two unique features. (1) Semantic recommendation. RecExp provides different recommendation models to comply with users' requirements through setting of meta paths. (2) Interpretive recommendation. Under a hybrid recommendation model, RecExp provides the explanations for the recommendation results.