Each of the sponsoring bodies appoints a Technical Secretary and IMO an Administrative Secretary. Together these nine individuals form the Joint Secretariat.
Members meet annually, in sessions, to discuss past work and organize future work.
The substance of this work is carried out in Working Groups which meet intersessionally. Groups are established for the purposes of carrying out specific projects only and then disbanded. Although sponsored, the decision to approve and publish a report is made exclusively by the experts themselves. However, it does focus specifically on the natural sciences. Projects have been rejected in the past on the basis that they were not interdisciplinary enough or involved economics and politics to a larger degree.