SpecTran: Spectral-Aware Transformer-based Adapter for LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendation
sigir26-177 · Full research paper · Yu Cui, Feng Liu, Zhaoxiang Wang, Changwang Zhang, Jun Wang, Can Wang, Jiawei Chen
Efficiency and Deployment · 25% LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendati · 25% Sequential and Session-based Recomme · 25% LLM-Collaborative Filtering Integrat · 12%
Abstract
Traditional sequential recommendation (SR) models learn low-dimensional item ID embeddings from user-item interactions, often overlooking textual information such as item titles or descriptions. Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have inspired a surge of research that encodes item textual information with high-dimensional semantic embeddings, and designs transformation methods to inject such embeddings into SR models. These embedding transformation strategies can be categorized into two types, both of which exhibits notable drawbacks: 1) adapter-based methods suffer from pronounced dimension collapse, concentrating information into a few dominant dimensions; 2) SVD-based methods are rigid and manual, considering only a few principal spectral components while discarding rich information in the remaining spectrum.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bo Chen 0023 | 64 | 85 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 79 ReLLa: Retrieval-enhanced Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 65 Towards Open-World Recommendation with Knowledge Augmentation from Large Language Models (2024) Knowledge Infusion and Open-World Augmentation |
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| 2 | Junjie Zhang 0009 | 54 | 63 Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 63 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 54 Frequency-Augmented Mixture-of-Heterogeneous-Experts Framework for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 3 | Min Hou 0004 | 51 | 86 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 63 RecCocktail: A Generalizable and Efficient Framework for LLM-Based Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization 52 STGCN: A Spatial-Temporal Aware Graph Learning Method for POI Recommendation (2020) Graph Neural Network Architectures for CF |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Maolin Wang 0001 | 56 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Maolin Wang 0001 assigned | 56 | 15 papers | |
| Pengyue Jia | 54 | 10 papers | |
| Yanan Niu | 52 | 15 papers | |
| Kun Gai COI: co-author | 51 | 5 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 51 | 15 papers | |
| Xin Xin 0003 COI: co-author | 50 | 10 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bo Chen 0023 assigned | 64 | 3 | 85 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 79 ReLLa: Retrieval-enhanced Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 2 | Bo Peng 0009 | 59 | 3 | 63 eCeLLM: Generalizing Large Language Models for E-commerce from Large-scale, High-quality Instruction Data (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 59 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 3 | Bowen Zheng 0005 | 58 | 3 | 77 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 54 Reciprocal Sequential Recommendation (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 4 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 COI: co-author | 57 | 3 | 65 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 55 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 5 | Yang Zhang 0072 | 57 | 3 | 63 Preliminary Study on Incremental Learning for Large Language Model-based Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 61 AlpsBench: An LLM Personalization Benchmark for Real-Dialogue Memorization and Preference Alignment (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 6 | Jianling Wang | 56 | 3 | 66 LLMs for User Interest Exploration in Large-scale Recommendation Systems (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 65 Fresh Content Recommendation at Scale: A Multi-funnel Solution and the Potential of LLMs (2024) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 8 | Jizhi Zhang COI: co-author | 56 | 3 | 63 Navigating Large Language Models for Recommendation: From Architecture to Learning Paradigms and Deployment (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 63 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 9 | Hao Liu 0078 | 55 | 3 | 83 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 51 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 10 | Jiancan Wu COI: co-author | 55 | 3 | 87 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 87 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 11 | Jieming Zhu | 55 | 3 | 73 ROMA: Recommendation-Oriented Language Model Adaptation Using Multi-Modal Multi-Domain Item Sequences (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 65 Efficient and Deployable Knowledge Infusion for Open-World Recommendations via Large Language Models (2026) Knowledge Infusion and Open-World Augmentation |
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| 13 | Chongming Gao COI: co-author | 54 | 3 | 66 Large Language Models are Learnable Planners for Long-Term Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 60 Don't Start Over: A Cost-Effective Framework for Migrating Personalized Prompts Between LLMs (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 14 | Junjie Zhang 0009 assigned | 54 | 3 | 63 Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 63 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 15 | Han Li 0005 COI: co-author | 53 | 3 | 77 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 61 LEARN: Knowledge Adaptation from Large Language Model to Recommendation for Practical Industrial Application (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 16 | Fei Sun 0001 COI: co-author | 53 | 3 | 60 LoRec: Combating Poisons with Large Language Model for Robust Sequential Recommendation (2024) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 54 XDM: Improving Sequential Deep Matching with Unclicked User Behaviors for Recommender System (2022) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 17 | Junwei Pan | 53 | 3 | 71 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 67 Empowering Large Language Model for Sequential Recommendation via Multimodal Embeddings and Semantic IDs (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 18 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 53 | 3 | 65 MoRE: A Mixture of Reflectors Framework for Large Language Model-Based Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 57 Benefit from Rich: Tackling Search Interaction Sparsity in Search Enhanced Recommendation (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 19 | Seongmin Park 0002 | 53 | 3 | 57 Temporal Linear Item-Item Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation 54 MUFFIN: Mixture of User-Adaptive Frequency Filtering for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 21 | Wei Guo 0006 | 52 | 3 | 64 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 55 Breaking the Bottleneck: User-Specific Optimization and Real-Time Inference Integration for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 22 | Huifeng Guo COI: co-author | 52 | 3 | 65 LLMTreeRec: Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models for Cold-Start Recommendations (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 61 Prompt Tuning as User Inherent Profile Inference Machine (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 23 | Yang Song 0008 | 52 | 3 | 58 Large Language Models Enhanced Collaborative Filtering (2024) LLM-Enhanced Collaborative Filtering 53 Mixed Attention Network for Cross-domain Sequential Recommendation (2024) Cross-Domain and Cross-Market Sequential Recommendation |
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| 24 | Min Hou 0004 assigned | 51 | 3 | 86 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 63 RecCocktail: A Generalizable and Efficient Framework for LLM-Based Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 25 | Chen Wang 0052 | 51 | 3 | 66 Cluster-Aware Item Prompt Learning for Session-Based Recommendation (2025) LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendation 53 Confidence-Aware Fine-Tuning of Sequential Recommendation Systems Via Conformal Prediction (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 27 | Jie Jiang 0015 | 51 | 3 | 87 Pre-train, Align, and Disentangle: Empowering Sequential Recommendation with Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 71 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 29 | James Caverlee | 50 | 3 | 79 Language Models as Semantic Augmenters for Sequential Recommenders (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 53 Consistency-Aware Recommendation for User-Generated Item List Continuation (2020) Multimodal Recommendation for Domain Applications |
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| 30 | Yongjing Hao COI: co-author | 50 | 3 | 55 Feature-Level Deeper Self-Attention Network With Contrastive Learning for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 52 Edge-enhanced Global Disentangled Graph Neural Network for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Sequential and Session-Based Graph Recommendation |
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| 31 | Qijiong Liu | 50 | 3 | 69 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 55 FANS: Fast Non-Autoregressive Sequence Generation for Item List Continuation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 33 | Lantao Hu | 49 | 3 | 55 Modeling User Fatigue for Sequential Recommendation (2024) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 53 Unsupervised Ranking Ensemble Model for Recommendation (2024) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 34 | Yupeng Hou | 49 | 3 | 65 Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 53 Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment |
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| 35 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 49 | 3 | 54 DLCRec: A Novel Approach for Managing Diversity in LLM-Based Recommender Systems (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 53 Recommendation as Language Processing (RLP): A Unified Pretrain, Personalized Prompt & Predict Paradigm (P5) (2022) Knowledge Infusion and Open-World Augmentation |
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| 36 | Ke Wang 0038 | 49 | 3 | 73 Enhancing Cross-Domain Recommendation with Plug-In Contrastive Representations from Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 65 LLM-Grounded Diffusion for Cross-Domain Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |