The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the main standardization organization for Internet protocols. It is in charge of developing and maintaining standards for protocols at the layer 3 (network) and above. Anyone can participate to the IETF process.
These standards (and also some non-standard documents) are published under the name of RFC (which used to mean Request For Comments). These documents are freely available and redistributable. A good introduction for the IETF is published as a RFC, the Tao.
The IETF works a lot through digital means (such as mailing lists) has several physical meetings per year.