On optimization of expertise matching with various constraints

Abstract

This paper studies the problem of expertise matching with various constraints. Expertise matching, which aims to find the alignment between experts and queries, is a common problem in many applications such as conference paper–reviewer assignment, product–reviewer alignment, and product-endorser matching. Most existing methods formalize this problem as an information-retrieval problem and focus on finding a set of experts for each query independently. However, in real-world systems, various constraints are often needed to be considered. For example, in order to review a paper, it is desirable that there is at least one senior reviewer to guide the reviewing process. An important question is: “Can we design a framework to efficiently find the optimal solution for expertise matching under various constraints?” This paper explores such an approach by formulating the expertise matching problem in a constraint-based optimization framework. In the proposed framework, the problem of expertise matching is linked to a convex cost flow problem, which guarantees an optimal solution under various constraints. We also present an online matching algorithm to support incorporating user feedbacks in real time. The proposed approach has been evaluated on two different genres of expertise matching problems, namely conference paper–reviewer assignment and teacher–course assignment. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Based on the proposed method, we have also developed an online system for paper–reviewer suggestions, which has been used for paper–reviewer assignment in a top conference and feedbacks from the conference organizers are very positive.