The ALMA Cycle 9 Proposal Process
The results of the Cycle 9 Call for Proposals were announced to the community on 26 July2022. After considering the scientific rankings and operational considerations (e.g.,
configuration schedule, available time due to weather, regional balance), 286 high priority
programs (Grade A+B) were selected. The titles and abstracts of the selected programs areavailable on the ALMA Science Portal.
In Cycle 9, ALMA implemented distributed peer review for all proposals except Large
Programs, which continued to be reviewed by a panel process. ALMA is once again indebted
to the community for their participation of the proposal process. Many helpful suggestions
on the process were submitted by the reviewers, and a survey of the Cycle 9 Principal
Investigators is on-going to obtain their feedback. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) will be
conducting a detailed analysis of the Cycle 9 results and the surveys to further improve thereview process for Cycle 10.
Distributed peer review
Proposals requesting less than 50 h on the 12-m Array or less than 150 h on the 7-m Array instand-alone mode were reviewed using distributed peer review. A total of 1729 proposals
went through the distributed review process, with 1087 individual reviewers. Most reviewers
read either ten proposals (63% of the reviewers) or twenty proposals (24%). Stage 1 in the
distributed peer review process is mandatory. In the optional Stage 2, reviewers had theopportunity to read the comments from other reviewers, and if needed, revise their ranks
and reviews. A total of 528 reviewers completed the Stage 2 process, of which 323 mademodifications to their ranks and/or their reviews. The proposals for three reviewers werecancelled by the JAO: one reviewer did not submit their Stage 1 reviews, and the JAO foundthat two other reviewers did not complete their reviews in good faith.
Large Programs review
The ALMA Proposal Review Committee (APRC) met June 13-17 to recommend which Large
Programs should be scheduled. The virtual meeting was held 11-14 UTC on each day. The
different time zones of the APRC members meant that some participants started thediscussions as early as 4 am local time while others ended as late as 11 pm local time. We
thank the APRC for their dedication and patience through the daily zoom meeting!
For the first time, Large Programs were also reviewed by external Science Assessors, whoprovided their expert assessment of individual Large Programs to the APRC but did notparticipate in the APRC meeting. Each external Science Assessor reviewed between 1 and 3
Large Programs in their area of expertise and wrote a scientific assessment for each assigned
proposal. These assessments were sent to the APRC, who took this information into accountduring the discussion of the virtual face-to-face meeting and for the composition of theconsensus reports.

1Proposal statistics and results
The community submitted a total of 1769 proposals requesting close to 28,000 h of 12-m
Array time, with an overall subscription rate on the 12-m Array of 6.5. The number ofsubmitted proposals and the subscription rate in Cycle 9 is slightly higher than that in Cycle 8(1735, 6.1). As a result, once again many excellent proposals could not be scheduled becauseof the high oversubscription. Table 1 and Table 2 present the selection statistics grouped byregional affiliation and scientific category, respectively. Figures 1-3 show the time assigned tothe Grade A and B proposals by region, science category, and receiver band. Overall, 16% of
the proposals were accepted with priority Grade A or B.
Figure 4 shows the percentage of proposals assigned priority grade A or B as a function of theestimated execution time on the 12-m Array. The success rate, including Large Programs, islargely independent of execution time. The following 4 Large Programs are scheduled forCycle 9 based on the recommendation from the APRC and scheduling considerations.
1. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (2022.1.00338.L)
PI: Sebastian Marino (EU); coPIs: Meredith Hughes (NA), Luca Matra (EU)
2. A Spectroscopic survey of biased halos in the Reioinization Era (ASPIRE): A Quasar
Legacy Redshift Survey (2022.1.01077.L)
PI: Feige Wang (NA); coPIs: Junyi Yang (NA), Roberto Decarli (EU), Bram Venemans(EU), Xiaohui Fan (NA), Eduardo Bañados (EU)
3. The ALMA Disk-Exoplanet C/Onnection (2022.1.00875.L)
PI: Ilse Cleeves (NA); co-PIs: Anna Miotello (EU), Viviana Guzman (CL), Dana Anderson(NA), Yuri Aikawa (EA)
4. COMPASS: Complex Organic Molecules in Protostars with ALMA Spectral Surveys(2022.1.00316.L)
PI: Jes Jorgensen (EU); coPIs: Maria Drozdovskaya (EU), Audrey Countens (EU), Adele
Plunkett (NA), Jeong-Eun Lee (EA)2

Table 1: Summary of submitted and accepted proposals
Chile

East Asia

Europe(CL)

(EA)

(EU)

North
America(NA)Open Skies

Total

Submitted Proposals
Number of proposals
87401
686
535
61
1769
12-m Array time (hours)
1590
5652
110328939
699
27912
7-m Array time (hours)
605
4084
4822
5234
21714962
Total Power Array time (hours)
637
3980
3869
7582
2816096
Subscription rate
12-m Array (4300 h offered)
3.7
5.8
7.6
6.2
N/A
6.5
7-m Array time (3000 h offered)
26
4.8
5.2
N/A
5
Total Power Array (3000 h offered)
2.1
5.9
3.8
7.5
N/A
5.4
Grade A & B projects
Number of proposals
2858
96
100
3286
12-m Array time (hours)
461
943
1409
1421
2542597-m Array time (hours)
118
652
830
988
02587Total Power Array time (hours)
37573
661
1491
02762
Grade C projects
Number of proposals
1566
99
79
3262
12-m Array time (hours)
221
684
1173
1038
1931367-m Array time (hours)
92688
1283
989
133
3186
Total Power Array time (hours)
60
775
922
1110
02867
Regional distribution of all submitted proposals, and of the proposals recommended for scheduling with Grades A and B, andGrade C. Note: subscription rates do not apply for Open Skies since all regions contribute observing time for proposals fromPIs who are not affiliated with any of the ALMA regions.

Table 2: Proposals by science category

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4
Submitted Proposals
Number of proposals
12-m Array time (hours)
7-m Array time (hours)
Total Power Array time (hours)
Grade A & B projects
Number of proposals
12-m Array time (hours)
7-m Array time (hours)
Total Power Array time (hours)
Grade C projects
Number of proposals
12-m Array time (hours)
7-m Array time (hours)
Total Power Array time (hours)

Category 5

Total

432
8321
2102
356

396
6923
6057
7133

484
5756
5930
8394353
5521
640
34

104
1392
233
180

1769
27912
14962
16096

71
1230
357
0

70
843
767
813

79
1041
1017
1947

54
1008
447
0

12
136
0
2

286
4259
2587
2762

61
920
851
167

61
799
1123
1336

85
821
1075
1306

46
516
93
19

9
79
44
39

262
3136
3186
2867

Category 1: Cosmology and the high redshift universe; Category 2: Galaxies and Galactic nuclei; Category 3: Interstellar
medium, star formation, and astrochemistry; Category 4: Circumstellar disks, exoplanets, and the solar system; Category 5:Stellar evolution and the Sun.

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Figure 1: Distribution of execution time for Grade A and B projects by region for the r12-m (left), the 7-m (center), and theTotal Power (right) arrays.

Figure 2: Distribution of execution time for Grade A and B projects by scientific category for the 12-m (left), the 7-m (center)and the Total Power (right) array.

Figure 3: Distribution of execution time for Grade A and B projects by band for the 12-m (left), the 7-m (center) and the Total
Power (right) array.

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Figure 4: Fraction of proposals assigned Grade A and B as a function of the estimate execution time on the 12-m Array. The
error bars are 1 sigma from Poisson statistics.

Figure 5 (left panel) shows the the mean and median time requested on the 12-m Array for
Grade A+B proposals in each cycle. We can see that in Cycle 9 the mean and median time
requested on the 12-m Array for Grade A+B proposals were slightly smaller than in Cycle 8,
but still they were considerable larger than in previous cycles. As a result, the overall numberof accepted proposals in Cycle 9 was slightly higher than the number of accepted proposalsin Cycle 8 but smaller than in previous cycles (see Figure 5, right panel).

Figure 5: (Left) The requested 12-m Array time per proposal that has been assigned priority Grade A or B. (Right) The numberof proposals assigned Grade A + B that requested the 12-m Array versus the proposal cycle.

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Acknowledgements
We thank the 18 members of the ALMA Proposal Review Committee (APRC) and the 71
external Science Assessor for their participation in the review process of the Large Programs.
The APRC was chaired by Professor Raffaella Morganti, and included the following panel
members:Sean Andrews
Aya Higuchi
Christophe Pinte
Carlos De Breuck
Sheng-Yuan Liu
Cristina Ramos Almeida
Leen Decin
Elisabeth Mills
Nicolas Tejos
Kevin Flaherty
Ivelina Momcheva
John Tobin
Josep Girart
Kazuyuki Muraoka
Joaquin Vieira
Nanase Harada
Masamune Oguri
We would also like to thank the over 1000 reviewers who took part of the distributed peer
review process, whose participation was essential to the success of the Cycle 9 proposal call.

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