Semantic Recommendation of Bibliographical References: an Experience with Master Science’s Degree Students

This paper presents a proposal of a recommendation system of academic references for graduate students and researchers to use as a reading guide. The proposed approach analyzes the similarity of students' search criteria and information about their profile with academic references metadata. The recommendation approach is implemented through semantic technologies for storing references and students' profiles in an interoperable format, allowing their reuse. A case study was conducted using a simplified prototype. An ontology was developed for testing the characteristics to be evaluated on this work such as semantic storage of references/profiles and use of students' preferences in the recommendation logic. Results suggest that the proposed recommendation mechanism, based on the use of ontologies, achieved good levels of acceptance by users and also indicate that references recommendation systems for graduate (masters science degree, in this case), are perceived as useful tools by students.