Sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with ACM SIGOPS
The 21st USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '27) will take place on July 7–9, 2027, at Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor in Baltimore, MD, USA.
Important Dates
- Abstract registrations due: Tuesday, December 1, 2026, 5:59 pm EST (10:59 pm UTC)
- Complete paper submissions due: Tuesday, December 8, 2026, 5:59 pm EST (10:59 pm UTC)
- Notification to authors: Tuesday, March 16, 2027
- Final papers due: Thursday, June 3, 2027
Overview
OSDI, the USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, brings together professionals from academic and industrial backgrounds in a premier forum for discussing the design, implementation, and implications of systems software. OSDI emphasizes innovative research and quantified or insightful experiences in systems design and implementation.
OSDI takes a broad view of the systems area and solicits contributions from many fields of systems practice, including operating systems, file and storage systems, distributed systems, cloud computing, mobile systems, secure and reliable systems, systems aspects of big data, systems for machine learning, embedded systems, virtualization, networking as it relates to operating systems, and management and troubleshooting of complex systems. We also welcome work that explores the interface between systems and related areas such as artificial intelligence, computer architecture, networking, programming languages, analytics, and databases. We encourage contributions with highly original ideas, new approaches, and groundbreaking results.
New in 2027
Compared to previous years, OSDI '27:
- May include a preliminary review process, depending on the expected number of submissions and the experiences of other conferences
- Does not have a stated goal acceptance rate
Continued Important Policies from 2026:
- Keeps an Operational Systems track
- Requires resubmissions to describe how the new manuscript has improved
- Limits the number of submissions per author to eight
- Conditional acceptance decisions, no revise and resubmit
Submitting a Paper
Submissions will be judged on novelty, significance, interest, clarity, relevance, and correctness. An excellent paper will:
- Motivate a significant problem
- Propose an interesting and compelling solution
- Demonstrate the practicality and benefits of the solution
- Draw appropriate conclusions
- Clearly describe the paper's contributions
- Clearly articulate the advances beyond recent and historical work, especially but not only in systems
Continuing in OSDI's tradition, the OSDI program committee will select papers that offer significant contributions to computer systems research and align with the interests of our community. Reviewers will evaluate submissions based on topic relevance to computer systems and potential to impact future research and practices in computer systems. Additionally, submissions must offer insights that intrigue a substantial portion of OSDI attendees. Papers with little overlap with the program committee's interests are less likely to be accepted. Papers applying systems techniques to problems in new domains (e.g., ML) should engage with the relevant systems prior work, baseline against those known techniques, and spell out the new systems challenges the setting creates.
OSDI '27 will allow an author to be listed on at most eight submissions. If an author is listed on more than eight submissions to the conference, the program co-chairs will desk-reject surplus submissions.
The program committee will not aim on a particular acceptance rate but instead try to accept a number of strong papers that can fit reasonably within a 3-day program. At the same time, the committee realizes that very low acceptance rates harm conferences because they detrimentally bias the proceedings towards flawless presentations of narrower ideas or results.
Currently, submission rates are in great flux, and we will adapt the review process as needed. OSDI '27 may include an initial review process in which program committee members only examine the first few pages of papers. Whether OSDI ’27 includes this stage in the process will depend on the expected number of submissions and the experiences of conferences that are trying this process. Whether this process occurs and the subsequent details will be added to the Call for Papers at least one month before the paper submission deadline.
Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered. All submissions will be treated as confidential by USENIX and by USENIX reviewers prior to publication; rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.
Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, and plagiarism constitute dishonesty or fraud. Submission of work wholly or largely generated by AI also constitutes fraud (although the use of AI editing tools is acceptable). USENIX, like other scientific and technical conferences and journals, prohibits these practices and may, on the recommendation of a program chair, take action against authors who have committed them. See the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for details.
USENIX expects authors to adhere to high ethical standards and to ensure transparency and integrity in the publication of their work. Clear and consistent authorship practices support USENIX’s core mission and are essential to maintaining confidence in the research record. See the USENIX Authorship Policy for complete information, including criteria for authorship, details about pseudonymous authorship, the difference between contributors and authors, and the use of AI and similar tools in authorship.
OSDI '27 welcomes improved resubmissions. Submitting a paper that had been previously submitted to and not accepted by another conference or journal (but not workshop) is permitted as long as the manuscript substantially addresses previous reviews. Authors must provide information regarding the previous submission(s) and a summary of how the current manuscript has improved. This information should be uploaded via the submission form, and will be shared with the reviewers after reviews are complete but before final acceptance decisions are made. The chairs reserve the right to reject papers which do not address valid concerns raised in prior submissions.
Prior or concurrent workshop publication does not preclude publishing a related paper in OSDI. The online submission form will require authors to submit a copy of the related workshop paper and a short explanation of the new material in the conference paper beyond that published in the workshop version. The co-chairs may then share the submission with the workshop's organizers and discuss it with them.
Prior or concurrent publication in non-peer-reviewed contexts, like arXiv.org, technical reports, talks, and social media posts, is permitted. However, your OSDI submission must use an anonymized name for your project or system that differs from any used in such contexts.
USENIX discourages program co-chairs from submitting papers to the conferences they organize, although they are allowed to do so. Should either program co-chair submit work to OSDI '27, their papers will be handled exclusively by the other program co-chair and reviewed according to the same rigorous and double-blinded procedures that the program committee applies to all papers. In the event that a paper is co-authored by, or otherwise conflicted with both co-chairs, the co-chairs will designate a PC member to manage the reviewing process for that paper.
Questions? Contact the program co-chairs, [email protected], or the USENIX office, [email protected].
By submitting a paper, you agree that, if the paper is accepted, at least one of the authors will register to attend the conference at full price (i.e., not the student rate) and to present the paper; USENIX members at the Sustainer level and higher may apply their membership discounts to their registrations. If an author plans to present more than one paper, one full-price registration will still be required for each paper.
Accepted papers will generally be available online to registered attendees before the conference. If your accepted paper should not be published prior to the event, please notify [email protected]. The papers will be available online to everyone beginning on the first day of the symposium.
If your paper is accepted and you need an invitation letter to apply for a visa to attend the conference, please contact [email protected] as soon as possible. Visa applications are reportedly taking more than three months to process. Please identify yourself as a presenter or an author, and include your mailing address in your email request.
Deadline and Submission Instructions
Authors must register abstracts and submit full papers by the dates indicated above. These are hard deadlines, and no extensions will be given.
Submitted papers must be no longer than 12 single-spaced 8.5" x 11" pages, including figures and tables, plus as many pages as needed for references, using 10-point type on 12-point (single-spaced) leading, two-column format, Times Roman or a similar font, within a text block 7" wide x 9" deep. Pages should be numbered, and figures and tables should be legible in black and white, without requiring magnification. Accepted papers will be allowed 14 pages in the proceedings, plus references.
Papers not meeting the submission criteria will be desk-rejected without review, and no deadline extensions will be granted for reformatting.
OSDI '27 may introduce an early review process. The decision of whether to include this process will depend on the number of submissions received and the experiences reported by other conferences who have recently used similar approaches. An early review process will involve PC members reading only the first few pages of a paper (i.e., the abstract and introduction) and deciding whether it warrants further review. Whether OSDI '27 introduces an early review process will be stated on the conference website at least one month before the submission deadline. If one is introduced, the website will include details on how it will work and its criteria.
Submission Tracks
OSDI '27 offers two reviewing tracks, the Research track (comparable to previous OSDIs) and the Operational Systems track. Authors will select the relevant track on the submission form. Additionally, the title of a paper submitted to the Operational Systems track should end with "(Operational Systems)".
Submissions to the Operational Systems track should describe the design, implementation, analysis, and experience of operational systems. Examples might include, but are not limited to, overviews of large-scale deployed systems, targeted, but impactful, interventions on widely-deployed systems software, or medium-scale campus-wide deployed systems. Novel research ideas are not required for the Operational Systems track, but papers in this track should expand public knowledge of computer systems by, for example, disproving or strengthening existing assumptions, deepening the understanding of existing problems, or validating known techniques at new scales or in new environments.
The rules regarding anonymization are different for the Operational Systems track. Authors' names must be withheld as usual, but the submission may use real company names, links, system names, and so forth, if reviewers will need the real-world operational context for a submission.
Authors must indicate on their title page and on the submission form that they are submitting to the Operational Systems track. Since the tracks are subject to different reviewing criteria, the final program will explicitly indicate each paper's track.
Supplementary Material
Authors may upload supplementary material in files separate from their submissions. PC members are not required to read supplementary material when reviewing the paper, so each paper should stand alone without it. Authors may use this for content that may be of interest to some readers but is peripheral to the main technical contributions of the paper. Examples of materials that may be included are: formal proofs that are only sketched in the paper; snippets of code that detail an algorithm presented in the paper; and methodological details not essential for the PC's assessment but important for reproducibility. Importantly, because the PC members are not required to read the supplementary material, the submission must stand alone without it. Attaching supplementary material is optional; if your paper says that you have formal proofs or source code, you need not attach them to convince the PC of their existence.
Identity Blinding
The paper review process is double-blind. Authors must make a good-faith effort to anonymize their submissions, and they should not identify themselves either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through references or acknowledgments). Authors should also anonymize their institutions. Institution anonymization is mandatory for Research-track submissions and encouraged for Operational Systems-track submissions, though in the latter track, open identification of an institution or system may be required to give reviewers a full understanding of operational context. Submissions violating the detailed formatting and anonymization rules will be rejected without review. If you are uncertain about how to anonymize your submission, contact the program co-chairs, [email protected], well in advance of the submission deadline.
Blinding is not expected to maintain anonymization to an actively investigating reviewer. Authors may post their submissions on arxiv or other open publication sites.
Abstract Registration
Registering abstracts a week before paper submission is an essential part of the paper-reviewing process, as PC members use this time to identify which papers they are qualified to review. Abstract registrations that do not provide sufficient information to understand the topic and contribution (e.g., empty abstracts, placeholder abstracts, or trivial abstracts) will be desk rejected, thereby precluding paper submission.
Conflicts
When registering your abstract, you must provide information about conflicts with PC members. A PC member is a conflict if and only if one or more of the following circumstances applies:
Institution: You are currently employed at the same institution, have been previously employed at the same institution within the past two years (not counting concluded internships), or are going to begin employment at the same institution during the review period.
Advisor: You have a past or present association as thesis advisor or advisee.
Collaboration: You have a collaboration on a project, publication, grant proposal, program co-chairship, or editorship within the past two years (December 2024 through December 2026).
Personal: You are close family relatives (spouses, domestic partners, parents, or children).
You must not identify a PC member as a conflict if none of these circumstances applies. For instance, the following are not sufficient grounds to specify a conflict with a PC member: they have reviewed the work before, they are employed by your competitor, they are your friend, they were your post-doc advisor or advisee, or they had the same advisor as you. If you feel someone on the PC who does not fall into the above categories has a conflict of interest with you and should be marked as a conflict, please contact the program co-chairs.
The chairs will review paper conflicts to ensure the integrity of the reviewing process, adding or removing conflicts if necessary. The chairs may reject abstracts or papers on the basis of missing or extraneous conflicts. If there is evidence that an author has intentionally defined conflicts incorrectly in order to subvert the reviewing process, the chairs will submit their names and evidence to USENIX and SIGOPS. If you have any questions about conflicts, please contact the program co-chairs.
Authors are also encouraged to contact the program co-chairs, [email protected], if needed to relate their OSDI submissions to relevant submissions of their own that are simultaneously under review or awaiting publication at other venues. The program co-chairs will use this information at their discretion to preserve the anonymity of the review process without jeopardizing the outcome of the current OSDI submission.
Papers must be in PDF format and must be submitted via the submission system, which will be available here soon. For more details on the submission process, and for templates to use with LaTeX, Word, etc., authors should consult the detailed submission requirements.
Conditionally Accepted Papers
Some OSDI '27 papers may be accepted conditionally. This decision indicates a heavyweight shepherding process in which a paper will be rejected unless the authors make a set of changes determined by the program committee during the review period. The changes required may go beyond the constraints of traditional shepherding, and may, for example, require additional technical work. All changes mandated by the program committee must be completed by the final paper deadline and approved by the shepherd for the paper to be accepted in the final program. Authors unwilling or unable to meet acceptance conditions may withdraw their work for revision and possible resubmission elsewhere.