Formed in 1989, the GOCAD Research Consortium is an international group of universities and industries interested in advancing the science of geomodeling. The goal of the Consortium is to develop a new approach to geomodeling for use in the oil and gas, mining and environmental industries thus driving technology development. Today, the GOCAD Research Consortium includes 22 companies and 87 universities that use GOCAD predominantly for exploration and production modeling in the oil & gas industry.

The primary purpose of the Consortium is to provide financial support and hands-on control of the research activities performed within the frame of the GOCAD project. Direct interaction with sponsors allows the Consortium to focus on problems directly linked to the industry and develop new algorithms to model the sub-surface geometry and properties more accurately. The Consortium is currently exploring and delivering new prototypes of modeling tools within Base Module plug-ins. All the tools developed by the Consortium have been provided to all members of the consortium, and all sponsors have access to the "non-intrusive" source code developed by the Consortium.

Earth Decision is a member of the GOCAD Consortium and has an exclusive contract for the maintenance, development and commercialization of the GOCAD software kernel. Earth Decision mission is to continually improve the source code and to integrate these new tools inside the official version of the GOCAD software called the "GOCAD software kernel." GOCAD research is done using Earth Decision GOCAD software, thus facilitating the commercialization of prototypes created by the Consortium.