[This article first appeared in ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Vol

On March 21, 1983, the program committee for the 9th Symposium on Operating System Principles, having read the eighty-three papers submitted, selected sixteen for presentation at the symposium. This acceptance ratio of about one in five approximates those of past SOSPs, although the number of submissions was somewhat lower than in recent years. Several members of the program committee found it surprisingly easy to separate the good papers from the bad ones; indeed, the ten committee members quickly agreed on the disposition of over 80% of the papers. As the acceptance ratio indicates, most of these were rejections.