Scientific Committee
The role of this committee is to provide scientific leadership to the IQDR, provide peer review of proposals submitted to the Operational Group with regard to scientific merit, clinical relevance and proposed study design and prioritize protocols that may be carried out under the auspices of IQDR. They will select members for individual study committees. They will also be the committee that approves the authorships of publications that stem from Registry based research especially when the concept is generated from outside the Operational Group. As far as projects underway by the Operational Group prior to the institution of the Scientific Committee, that committee will not be asked to provide peer review but the committee may be asked by the Operational Group to provide input for future studies proposed by the Operational Group alone. They will meet the same study approval process as would an outside group and this would involve the Scientific Committee’s approval. The Scientific Committee will organize regular meetings which can be done mainly by conference call under the call of an appointed chair who will not be a member of the Operational Group. One meeting face-to-face will be attempted to coincide with either the Annual Dialysis Conference (ADC) or with the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) meeting.
The Scientific Committee will support the Operational Group with regard to input concerning protocols, epidemiological and statistical for their own and outside study proposals. They will also help the Advisory Committee when it comes to setting up policies and agreements with funding sources such as industry.
Scientific Committee Membership
The membership of the Committee will be primarily leading clinical researchers with a knowledge or interest in more frequent hemodialysis. All members of the Scientific Committee will make disclosure with regard to any financial or other arrangements they might have with any outside party that is providing funding the IQDR. Members of the Scientific Committee should not be directly employed by any organization that provides funds to IQDR. There should be appropriate representation from participating geographical areas to ensure that international flavour of the IQDR work is maintained. The co-principal investigators of IQDR (co-chairs of the Operational Group) will be ex-officio members of the Scientific Committee with voting rights. At any time, one other member (no more) of the Operational Group may be elected to the committee for a given term of office.