Volume 36, Issue 2 e12365
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A social recommendation system for academic collaboration in undergraduate research

Yang Liu

Corresponding Author

Yang Liu

School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Correspondence

Yang Liu, School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.

Email: [email protected]

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Chen Yang

Chen Yang

College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

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Jian Ma

Jian Ma

Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

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Wei Xu

Wei Xu

School of Information, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

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Zhongsheng Hua

Zhongsheng Hua

School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

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First published: 11 December 2018
Citations: 18

Abstract

Academic collaboration plays an important role in undergraduate research. Current methods rely on offline social contacts for undergraduate students to collaborate with academic staff members in universities and research institutions. In big data era, it is difficult for undergraduate students to find suitable research project opportunities and supervisors to work with. This paper proposes a social recommendation system for undergraduate students to find research project opportunities and work with research project teams on an academic collaboration network. The proposed recommendation method integrates relevance, connectivity, and quality modules, where profiles of undergraduates are constructed with their self-claimed information, research activities (e.g., studying and reading research publications and reading research projects), and social connections in the academic collaboration network. Suitable research projects are recommended based on the undergraduates' profiles. Experiments are conducted, and the results have shown that the proposed social recommendation system can facilitate undergraduates' selection of research projects.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

We have no conflict of interest to disclose.

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