The role of the Scientific Steering Committee has been laid out in the memorandum of understanding of the consortium.  This states:

Project Specific Working Groups

Membership: These groups will be project specific and their composition will be at the discretion of the nominated PSWG lead and/or recommendations of the SSC. Each PSWG lead will report to the steering committee on progress. Each PSWG will thus likely consist of the nominated PSWG lead, representatives from participating cohorts and lead analyst(s).

Responsibilities: PSWGs will be responsible for delivering the aims of the specific project approved by the SSC. The PSWG lead, appointed by the SSC, will convene the PSWG for the proposed hypothesis to study.

  1. Following preliminary approval of a project and nomination of a PSWG lead, the PSWG will prepare full proposals and submit them to the SSC for discussion and revision prior to final approval.
  2. The PSWG lead will contact individual member cohorts to invite formal participation in the specific project
  3. The PSWG will establish analysis plans, analysis scripts, coordinate data management, and ensure QC of genotypes/biomarkers
  4. The PSWG will decide on a date for data freeze after which studies can no longer contribute their data to the analyses. PSWGs need to be flexible to accommodate pre-existing agreement/ collaborations.
  5. PSWGs will evaluate results, perform meta-analyses of summary level data, write papers and decide on the need for additional follow-up studies
  6. PSWGs will decide the publication strategy and authorship criteria, before final approval by the SSC.
  7. Each PSWG lead will run meetings and coordinate calls for practical management.
  8. PSWGs may encourage joint ancillary-study application to accomplish new scientific aims.