Organization

The ICTV Organization

The ICTV is organized into an Executive Committee (EC) composed of the Officers of the ICTV, Subcommittee Chairs, and Elected Members. The officers manage ICTV activities, while the subcommittee chairs are responsible for managing a series of Study Groups that assess the current virus taxonomy and recommend updates and additions to the taxonomy based on current knowledge of virus diversity and classification. Elected members assist the subcommittee chairs in managing the process of making taxonomic assignments.

Currently, the ICTV is composed of 7 subcommittees covering Animal DNA viruses and Retroviruses, Animal dsRNA and ssRNA (-) viruses, Animal ssRNA (+) viruses, Bacterial viruses, Archaeal Viruses, Fungal and Protist viruses, and Plant viruses.  The ICTV has established over 100 international Study Groups (SGs) covering all major virus families and genera. The Chair of each SG is appointed by the relevant Subcommittee Chair. SG Chairs are responsible for (i) organizing discussions among SG members of emerging taxonomic issues in their field, (ii) overseeing the submission of proposals for new taxonomy, and (iii) the preparation and revision of relevant chapter(s) in the ICTV Report.

The figure below displays the organizational structure of the ICTV.