Expert Peer Review

Over the years, RAN has gathered more than 200 practices in the field of P/CVE, with the aim of providing a valuable source of information and inspiration for practitioners, policy makers and researchers. Since 2020, practice owners whose P/CVE practices are part of the RAN Collection had the opportunity to take part in an expert peer review. These reviews were conducted by members of the RAN Practitioners Expert Pool with expertise in the field of the practice.

The aim of the expert peer reviews was threefold: 1) to provide practice owners with a low-threshold opportunity to receive input from a peer expert on a voluntary basis, 2) to raise awareness on the necessity of continuously reviewing P/CVE interventions, tools and methods and 3) to support practitioners with the professionalisation of their projects.

Once practice owners decided to take part in the expert peer review process, the respective practice was matched with an expert from the RAN Practitioners Expert Pool. Criteria for the selection of experts were:

• Selected experts needed to have a minimum of 5 years of experience as first-line practitioners in the field of P/CVE;
• Proven knowledge on the work field/theme of the respective practice they will review;
• Proven experience with constructive reviewing, theory of change and/or evaluating;
• Selected experts should be members of the RAN Practitioners Expert Pool.

After the expert selection, practice owners were asked whether they agree with the matched expert. If so, practice owners were then asked to provide the expert with relevant information, including (published) documents, website links, videos, and/or evaluation reports of the practice. The practice owner could flag possible topics, challenges or questions for the expert to focus on in the review. In a second step, a joint call was set up. Taking into account the theoretical implications of the practice, its objectives, methods and resources, the expert wrote a non-binding internal one-page advice letter for the practice and suggested possible opportunities for the practice. 

Each year, a new selection of RAN Collection practices were invited for an expert peer review on a voluntary basis. The selection of invited practices was based on key topics and priority areas of the annual “Strategic Orientations on a coordinated EU approach to prevention of radicalisation”. Additionally, a balanced geographical spread of practices throughout the EU and an equal distribution of practices focusing on primary, secondary and tertiary prevention was considered when inviting practices:

• Primary prevention is targeted at whole population groups or everyone within a broad category of P/CVE.
• Secondary prevention is targeted at defined groups at risk of radicalisation/violent extremism and/or prone to committing criminal/terrorist acts.
• Tertiary prevention is directed toward radicalised individuals or problem groups and individuals who demonstrate problematic behaviour for a violent extremism cause.

Additional criteria were:

• The practice is still active*;
• The practice was last updated in the RAN Collection in 2020, 2021 or 2022, so there is a focus on the most recently updated practices;
• The practice has been monitored and evaluated to some degree.

^{*Some practices in the RAN Collection were ‘short-term interventions’ and are no longer running (but could be repeated in the future). Since some of these practices are excellent examples of P/CVE interventions, exceptions may be made regarding this criterion if sufficient information is provided by the practice owner and if the organisation is still existing.}

In 2020, the RAN Collection started the expert peer review to help raise awareness about the importance of exchange with peers in the same field. In 2024, 29 practices have taken part in the review process. Below, the expert peer reviews are reflected in ‘The RAN Collection in numbers’ (June 2024).

Please see this infographic for the overarching lessons that can be drawn from the 2021 Expert Peer Review.