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Fusion and Alignment Enhancement with Large Language Models for Tail-item Sequential Recommendation

sigir26-216 · Full research paper · Zhifu Wei, Yizhou Dang, Guibing Guo, Chuang Zhao, Zhu Sun
Sequential and Session-based Recomme · 25% Collaborative-Semantic Representatio · 25% LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendati · 12% Sequential Recommendation with User · 12%
Abstract

Sequential Recommendation (SR) learns user preferences from their historical interaction sequences and provides personalized suggestions. In real-world scenarios, most items exhibit sparse interactions, known as the tail-item problem. This issue limits the model's ability to accurately capture item transition patterns. To tackle this, large language models (LLMs) offer a promising solution by capturing semantic relationships between items. Despite previous efforts to leverage LLM-derived embeddings for enriching tail items, they still face the following limitations: 1) They struggle to effectively fuse collaborative signals with semantic knowledge, leading to suboptimal item embedding quality. 2) Existing methods overlook the structural inconsistency between the ID and LLM embedding spaces, causing conflicting signals that degrade recommendation accuracy. In this work, we propose a Fusion and Alignment Enhancement framework with LLMs for Tail-item Sequential Recommendation (FAERec), which improves item representations by generating coherently-fused and structurally consistent embeddings. For the information fusion challenge, we design an adaptive gating mechanism that dynamically fuses ID and LLM embeddings. Then, we propose a dual-level alignment approach to mitigate structural inconsistency. The item-level alignment establishes correspondences between ID and LLM embeddings of the same item through contrastive learning, while the feature-level alignment constrains the correlation patterns between corresponding dimensions across the two embedding spaces. Furthermore, the weights of the two alignments are adjusted by a curriculum learning scheduler to avoid premature optimization of the complex feature-level objective. Extensive experiments across three widely used datasets with multiple representative SR backbones demonstrate the effectiveness and generalizability of our framework. The codes are provided at https://github.com/ZhifuWei/FAERec.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy)
1 Bowen Zheng 0005
64
75 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
64 Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
54 Reciprocal Sequential Recommendation (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
2 Xiao Zhang 0034
55
62 MoRE: A Mixture of Reflectors Framework for Large Language Model-Based Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
60 Benefit from Rich: Tackling Search Interaction Sparsity in Search Enhanced Recommendation (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
55 Retrieval Augmented Generation with Collaborative Filtering for Personalized Text Generation (2025) Personalized and Conversational RAG
3 Yang Song 0008
53
70 Large Language Models Enhanced Collaborative Filtering (2024) LLM-Enhanced Collaborative Filtering
55 Learning and Optimization of Implicit Negative Feedback for Industrial Short-video Recommender System (2023) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation
55 Retrieval Augmented Generation with Collaborative Filtering for Personalized Text Generation (2025) Personalized and Conversational RAG

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Maolin Wang 0001 64
Area-chair candidates (6)
Maolin Wang 0001 assigned 6415 papers
Kun Gai 535 papers
Xin Xin 0003 COI: co-author 5210 papers
Yanan Niu 5115 papers
Pengyue Jia 5110 papers
Leyu Lin 5015 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
2 Bowen Zheng 0005 assigned 64 3
75 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
64 Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
3 Seongmin Park 0002 57 3
63 LLM-Enhanced Linear Autoencoders for Recommendation (2025) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
57 Temporal Linear Item-Item Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation
4 Jizhi Zhang 57 3
75 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
64 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
5 Zhengyi Yang 0007 56 3
64 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
62 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
6 Bo Peng 0009 56 3
54 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation
54 HAM: Hybrid Associations Models for Sequential Recommendation (Extended abstract) (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
7 Jianling Wang 56 3
64 LLMs for User Interest Exploration in Large-scale Recommendation Systems (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
54 A Hierarchical Self-Attentive Model for Recommending User-Generated Item Lists (2019) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation
8 Fei Sun 0001 56 3
55 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
9 Jiancan Wu 55 3
96 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
96 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
10 Xiao Zhang 0034 assigned 55 3
62 MoRE: A Mixture of Reflectors Framework for Large Language Model-Based Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
60 Benefit from Rich: Tackling Search Interaction Sparsity in Search Enhanced Recommendation (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
11 Bo Chen 0023 55 3
82 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
76 ReLLa: Retrieval-enhanced Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
12 Yang Zhang 0072 54 3
56 Text-like Encoding of Collaborative Information in Large Language Models for Recommendation (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
56 CoLLM: Integrating Collaborative Embeddings Into Large Language Models for Recommendation (2025) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
13 Junwei Pan COI: co-author 54 3
75 Pre-train, Align, and Disentangle: Empowering Sequential Recommendation with Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
68 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
14 Qiang Luo 0004 53 3
54 FIM: Frequency-Aware Multi-View Interest Modeling for Local-Life Service Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
52 OneLoc: Geo-Aware Generative Recommender Systems for Local Life Service (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs
15 Han Li 0005 53 3
75 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
63 LEARN: Knowledge Adaptation from Large Language Model to Recommendation for Practical Industrial Application (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
16 Yang Song 0008 assigned 53 3
70 Large Language Models Enhanced Collaborative Filtering (2024) LLM-Enhanced Collaborative Filtering
55 Learning and Optimization of Implicit Negative Feedback for Industrial Short-video Recommender System (2023) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation
18 Jieming Zhu 52 3
73 ROMA: Recommendation-Oriented Language Model Adaptation Using Multi-Modal Multi-Domain Item Sequences (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
69 EAGER-LLM: Enhancing Large Language Models as Recommenders through Exogenous Behavior-Semantic Integration (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
19 Chen Wang 0052 52 3
63 Collaborative Alignment for Recommendation (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
58 Cluster-Aware Item Prompt Learning for Session-Based Recommendation (2025) LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendation
20 Hao Liu 0078 52 3
70 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment
49 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation
22 Jie Jiang 0015 COI: co-author 51 3
96 Pre-train, Align, and Disentangle: Empowering Sequential Recommendation with Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
68 Cross-Scale Collaboration between LLMs and Lightweight Sequential Recommenders with Domain-Specific Latent Reasoning (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
23 Yupeng Hou 51 3
66 Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
54 CoRAL: Collaborative Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models Improve Long-tail Recommendation (2024) RAG for Domain Applications
25 Wei Guo 0006 51 3
54 FuXi-γ: Efficient Sequential Recommendation with Exponential-Power Temporal Encoder and Diagonal-Sparse Positional Mechanism (2026) Efficient Sequential Recommendation Architectures
54 Dataset Regeneration for Sequential Recommendation (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
28 Ke Wang 0038 50 3
86 Enhancing Cross-Domain Recommendation with Plug-In Contrastive Representations from Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
73 LLM-Grounded Diffusion for Cross-Domain Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders
29 Chongming Gao 50 3
62 Large Language Models are Learnable Planners for Long-Term Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
55 Tunable LLM-based Proactive Recommendation Agent (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
30 Lantao Hu 50 3
56 Modeling User Fatigue for Sequential Recommendation (2024) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation
53 MODEM: Decoupling User Behavior for Shared-Account Video Recommendations on Large Screen Devices (2024) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning
31 Chunyang Wang 0001 50 3
57 Learning Graph-based Disentangled Representations for Next POI Recommendation (2022) Sequential and Session-Based Graph Recommendation
54 MESA: Plugin Meta-Modulation for Transformer-Based Cold-Start Sequential Recommendation (2026) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
32 Yongjing Hao 50 3
53 Tell Me Where to Go Next: Improving POI Recommendation via Conversation (2021) Conversational Recommendation Systems
52 Feature-Level Deeper Self-Attention Network With Contrastive Learning for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation
33 James Caverlee 50 3
75 Language Models as Semantic Augmenters for Sequential Recommenders (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
54 Consistency-Aware Recommendation for User-Generated Item List Continuation (2020) Multimodal Recommendation for Domain Applications
34 Jiangxia Cao 50 3
67 Enhancing Content-based Recommendation via Large Language Model (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment
55 CDSRNP: Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation via Neural Process (2025) Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation
35 Junjie Zhang 0009 50 3
54 Frequency-Augmented Mixture-of-Heterogeneous-Experts Framework for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
50 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
36 Noveen Sachdeva 49 3
54 Explicit Modelling of the Implicit Short Term User Preferences for Music Recommendation (2018) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling
50 Attentive neural architecture incorporating song features for music recommendation (2018) Sequential Recommendation with Side and Multimodal Information