Universal Item Tokenization for Transferable Generative Recommendation
sigir26-196 · Full research paper · Bowen Zheng, Hongyu Lu, Yu Chen, Wayne Xin Zhao, Ji-Rong Wen
Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs · 50% Multi-Domain and Multi-Market Recomm · 25% Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs · 25%
Abstract
Recently, generative recommendation has emerged as a promising paradigm, attracting significant research attention. The basic framework involves an item tokenizer, which represents each item as a sequence of codes serving as its identifier, and a generative recommender that predicts the next item by autoregressively generating the target item identifier. However, in existing methods, both the tokenizer and the recommender are typically domain-specific, limiting their ability for effective transfer or adaptation to new domains.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jinxin Hu | 55 | 86 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 78 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 70 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 2 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 55 | 75 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 66 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 51 FARM: Frequency-Aware Model for Cross-Domain Live-Streaming Recommendation (2026) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR |
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| 3 | Lichan Hong | 52 | 85 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 76 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 61 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 52 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Leyu Lin COI: co-author | 53 | 15 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng assigned | 52 | 11 papers | |
| Weiming Liu 0005 | 50 | 8 papers | |
| Pengyue Jia | 46 | 10 papers | |
| Kun Gai COI: co-author | 46 | 5 papers | |
| Yanan Niu | 45 | 15 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yupeng Hou COI: co-author | 61 | 3 | 100 Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 85 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 2 | Hao Deng 0011 | 59 | 3 | 78 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 70 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 3 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 58 | 3 | 85 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 85 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 4 | Jiangxia Cao | 56 | 3 | 55 Towards Universal Cross-Domain Recommendation (2023) Multi-Domain and Multi-Market Recommendation 55 Item Similarity Mining for Multi-Market Recommendation (2022) Multi-Domain and Multi-Market Recommendation |
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| 5 | Jinxin Hu assigned | 55 | 3 | 86 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 78 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 6 | Qiang Luo 0004 assigned | 55 | 3 | 75 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 66 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 7 | Bowen Zheng 0005 COI: author | 55 | 3 | 86 Bridging Textual-Collaborative Gap through Semantic Codes for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 76 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 8 | Hao Liu 0078 | 55 | 3 | 58 MCRPL: A Pretrain, Prompt, and Fine-tune Paradigm for Non-overlapping Many-to-one Cross-domain Recommendation (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR 55 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 9 | Junwei Pan | 54 | 3 | 72 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 58 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 10 | Qijiong Liu | 53 | 3 | 85 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 85 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 12 | Lantao Hu COI: co-author | 52 | 3 | 69 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 68 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 13 | Ed H. Chi | 52 | 3 | 85 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 69 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 15 | Lichan Hong assigned | 52 | 3 | 85 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 76 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 17 | Ke Fei | 50 | 3 | 66 Sharpness-Consistent Cross-Domain Recommendation for Cold-Start Items (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 46 Stable and Adaptive Fusion for Multi-domain Multi-task Recommendation (2026) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction |
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| 18 | Yong He 0009 | 50 | 3 | 51 The Devil is in the Sources! Knowledge Enhanced Cross-Domain Recommendation in an Information Bottleneck Perspective (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR 51 Learning to Select Instance: Simultaneous Transfer Learning and Clustering (2021) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR |
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| 19 | Yongxin Ni | 49 | 3 | 66 Multi-Modality is All You Need for Transferable Recommender Systems (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 60 NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 20 | Yu Zhang 0206 | 49 | 3 | 69 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 61 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 21 | Ke Wang 0038 | 49 | 3 | 53 Contrastive Multi-view Interest Learning for Cross-domain Sequential Recommendation (2024) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 53 Enhancing Cross-Domain Recommendation with Plug-In Contrastive Representations from Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 22 | Han Li 0005 COI: co-author | 48 | 3 | 69 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 50 DiffusionGS: Generative Search with Query Conditioned Diffusion in Kuaishou (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 23 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 47 | 3 | 52 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 51 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 24 | Bo Chen 0023 | 47 | 3 | 54 Generative Representational Learning of Foundation Models for Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 47 Large language models make sample-efficient recommender systems (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 25 | Chunyang Wang 0001 | 47 | 3 | 54 Multifaceted Relation-aware Meta-learning with Dual Customization for User Cold-start Recommendation (2023) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR 50 Contrastive Multi-view Interest Learning for Cross-domain Sequential Recommendation (2024) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
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| 26 | Junjie Zhang 0009 COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 55 Curriculum-scheduled knowledge distillation from multiple pre-trained teachers for multi-domain sequential recommendation (2025) Cross-Domain and Cross-Market Sequential Recommendation 55 Review-Enhanced Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning |
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| 27 | Jiancan Wu | 46 | 3 | 85 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 47 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 28 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 46 | 3 | 75 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 51 Fading to Grow: Growing Preference Ratios via Preference Fading Discrete Diffusion for Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 29 | Jizhi Zhang | 46 | 3 | 72 Learnable Item Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 52 Decoding Matters: Addressing Amplification Bias and Homogeneity Issue in Recommendations for Large Language Models (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 30 | Junchen Fu | 46 | 3 | 60 NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 55 Exploring Adapter-based Transfer Learning for Recommender Systems: Empirical Studies and Practical Insights (2024) Language Model Pre-training and Adaptation |
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| 32 | Julian J. McAuley COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 85 Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 73 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 34 | Xuanhua Yang | 46 | 3 | 51 Towards Personalized Bundle Creative Generation with Contrastive Non-Autoregressive Decoding (2022) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 51 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 35 | Riwei Lai | 45 | 3 | 51 Proxy-Aware Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation (2023) Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation 50 Proxy-enhanced cross-domain sequential recommendation (2025) Cross-Domain and Cross-Market Sequential Recommendation |