DataRec: A Framework for Standardizing Recommendation Data Processing and Analysis

Thanks to the great interest posed by researchers and companies, recommendation systems became a cornerstone of machine learning applications. However, concerns have arisen recently about the need for reproducibility, making it challenging to identify suitable pipelines. Several frameworks have been proposed to improve reproducibility, covering the entire process from data reading to performance evaluation. Despite this effort, these solutions often overlook the role of data management, do not promote interoperability, and neglect data analysis despite its well-known impact on recommender performance. To address these gaps, we propose DataRec, which facilitates using and manipulating recommendation datasets. DataRec supports reading and writing in various formats, offers filtering and splitting techniques, and enables data distribution analysis using well-known metrics. It encourages a unified approach to data manipulation by allowing data export in formats compatible with several recommendation frameworks.