What does mean "chief expert" in a survey/ project that its results will be published as a report or book?

Many larger scientific projects involve a team of scientists and technicians. The chief expert is ultimately responsible for all scientific output (even if a lot of the work is done by others, it all passes his review and is done under his supervision). Usually the project leader is also the chief expert, but this isn't necessary.





In some more complicated cases, the chief expert is one of the primary scientists, responsible for the output of the team on one aspect of the project (say, structure or metallogeny of the area under study). In this second case, there would be several chief experts, one for each aspect of the project, but only one project leader who may or may not also be a chief expert for a certain field.