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Terms of Reference for the German HIV Practice Collection and the German HIV Peer Review Group

(currently under review)

Version of 02 April, 2008, including the comments by BMZ Thematic Team (TT) HIV/AIDS members and Peer Review Group (PRG) members

Table of Contents

Objectives of a joint German series of publications
Rationale for the German HIV Peer Review Process
Rationale for a PRG internet platform
Membership of the German HIV Peer Review Group
Criteria of the German HIV Practice Collection
Peer Review and documentation process
Responsibilities of the organisations represented in the ‘BMZ-HIV/AIDS-Thementeam’
Format of the publications
Authorships and acknowledgements


Objectives of a joint German series of publications

  • Joint presentation of all governmental German development organisations contributing to global, regional and national responses to HIV and AIDS
  • Enhanced visibility and raised profile of German development cooperation in the field of HIV and AIDS and of the successes and achievements of their development partners.

Rationale for the German HIV Peer Review Process

Quality assurance: Peer review is standard practice for assessing and assuring the quality of new developments in the field of science. In this case it is used to assess and assure that German development cooperation meets its objective to provide state-of-the-art expertise to its partner organisations.

Evidence-based interventions: The peer review process will focus on checking that all interventions recommended by the PRG are based on evidence and reflect good international public health policy and practice, including highest standards of ethics, human rights and gender – as they relate to HIV and AIDS.

Transparency: By inviting independent external experts as well as all interested AIDS experts working for the German implementing organisations to review and comment on the approaches under review, the quality assurance process is fully transparent.

Visibility: As recognized experts (e.g. of academic institutions, civil society, WHO, UNAIDS) are invited to review the approaches of German Development Cooperation, these become better known and more frequently discussed in internationally relevant contexts.

Collaborative and mutual learning: PRG members have regular opportunities to take part and learn from ongoing peer review processes. They are well informed about the approaches that are being developed by German development programmes with their partners in different parts of the world. And they can learn about the particular field as they follow how external experts assess these.

Shared ‘corporate identity’: By jointly agreeing on selection criteria for relevant and promising approaches and by jointly assessing various approaches regarding their relevance for the German profile, the German implementing organisation develop a shared and corporate understanding of the German contribution to the global AIDS response.

Rationale for a PRG internet platform

The platform provides all PRG members quick and simple access (‘by mouse-click’) to up-to-date information on all ongoing review and documentation processes. This helps to avoid

  • the need to wait for a reply by the PRG Secretary
  • confusion about which version of a draft is the current version
  • having to read, and store, yet more emails (rather than checking on the platform at a time when one wants the information).

The platform can also be used for commenting on ongoing review processes. However, its main purpose is the provision of a user-friendly, well-arranged and (only for members) easily accessible website with full information on all ongoing processes.

The following information is available on the platform (i.e. the website only accessible to members):

1. List of approaches that have been submitted for peer review and documentation in the German HIV Practice Collection (working title, proposing persons and organisations). For each of these, a half-page explanation of how they contribute to raising the profile of the German contribution to the global AIDS response.

2. List of approaches that have been approved by the BMZ-Thementeam as meeting this overreaching criterion and that will undergo peer review.

3. For each of these: One page with up-to-date information on the state of the initial draft, the appointment of peer reviewers and the peer review process. As soon as the initial draft is available, it will be uploaded and all interested PRG members can download it to read and comment. As soon as the peer review is complete, the results of it are also published here.

The following information is presented on the public website

1. Short description and rationale of the German HIV Practice Collection and the German HIV Peer Review Group
2. Description of the process (the ToR) under ‘How we work’
3. Description of how one can join the group and who can join it
4. All publications, in English and French, as short and long versions
5. For most publications: An online toolkit with download opportunities for background materials.

Membership of the German HIV Peer Review Group

The following persons can join the PRG if they have professional expertise and a minimum of three years work experience in the field of HIV and AIDS:

  • Experts working for all German development organisations (including experienced and frequently used consultants)
  • Experts working for their partner organisations
  • Experts working for German civil society and non-governmental organisations active in the field of HIV and AIDS
  • Experts working for academic institutions engaged in research relating to HIV and AIDS
  • Experts working on HIV responses for UN organisations

To join, candidates can contact the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or apply online on the ‘Become a Member' page of public section of the PRG website.

Criteria of the German HIV Practice Collection

The following criteria were discussed and agreed by the PRG in 2004 on the basis of a comparison of existing criteria for good practice used by other bilateral and international organisations in the field of development aid, public health and specifically HIV and AIDS:

Selection Criteria:

  • Effectiveness
  • Transferability
  • Participatory and empowering approach
  • Gender sensitivity
  • Quality of monitoring and evaluation
  • Innovation
  • Comparative cost-effectiveness
  • Sustainability

Peer Review and documentation process

  1. German AIDS experts and/or their counterparts propose approaches that they regard as contributing to raising the German profile and as meeting the criteria of the Collection. The PRG Secretariat continually updates the list of submissions on the platform (i.e. working title of submission, responsible experts)
  2. Those submitting an approach are requested to provide
    1. a half-page statement as to how the approach contributes to raising the profile of the German contribution;
    2. a statement explaining whether and how the partner organisation has approved of the submission and is involved in this process.
    3. Suggestions of 2-3 external peer reviewers, at least one of international standing, who can peer review the documentation.
  3. These statements and suggested peer reviewers are published on the platform
  4. The TT assesses the proposals based on this information at their meetings (2-3 times per year) and their decision is published on the platform.
  5. For each approved submission, a page is opened on the platform to document the peer review and documentation process (see 2.3)
  6. Before a first version of the documentation is drafted, the PRG Secretariat checks with the organisations involved whether a professional writer needs to be contracted in order to ensure the linguistic and editorial quality of the text, which must meet the standards of an international publication.
  7. A first version of the documentation is drafted.
  8. This draft is sent to the external peer reviewers and posted on the platform (for information and comments from PRG members)
  9. The result of the peer review is published on the platform. The result can be that the approach is not ready or unfit for publication. The responsible experts are informed accordingly.
  10. The second draft is written based on the comments of the peer reviewers and in accordance with the editorial and linguistic requirements of the Collection, which is ensured by the PRG Secretariat.
  11. The second draft is submitted for final approval to the responsible experts and organisations, including their partner organisations, and to the BMZ.
  12. The final version is given the standard layout and published on the public PRG website.

Responsibilities of the organisations represented in the ‘BMZ-HIV/AIDS-Thementeam’

  1. The AIDS sector project is responsible for running the Secretariat of the German HIV Peer Review Group. It coordinates the peer review and documentation process outlined above and it continually updates the platform and the public website.
  2. GTZ, KfW, DED and InWEnt contribute submissions of approaches that meet the criteria of the Collection and encourage HIV and AIDS experts in their organisations to become members of the German HIV Peer Review Group and, where appropriate, take part in the peer review of approaches of particular interest to them.
  3. All TT-members, including the BMZ, assess at their meetings whether submitted approaches contribute to raising the profile of the German contribution to the global AIDS response.
  4. All organisations represented in the TT widely share and disseminate (as internet link or in print) the publications of the German HIV Practice Collection in order to enhance the visibility of the German contribution to the global AIDS response.

Format of the publications

All publications are published as short version (4 pages) and as full version (approx. 15 - 35 pages) as pdf-documents. Only the short versions will also be printed. The standard outline of each publication is as follows:

  1. Executive summary (1 page)
  2. Introduction: Description of the project context (geographical, epidemiological, project history etc) and literature review of existing approaches in the particular field (What is new and unique about this approach? How does it add to the current state of the art?)
  3. Promising practices: Description of the approach, including references to tools (materials, manuals etc) that were developed and are available from the online toolbox;
  4. Results and lessons learnt: Description of the results of the approach and how these were measured. Discussion of the lessons learnt.
  5. Short discussion as to how the approach meets the criteria of the Collection.

Authorships and acknowledgements

The German HIV Peer Review Group is the Editor of the Collection and named as such. The PRG Secretariat, provided by the AIDS sector project implemented by GTZ, is legally responsible for the series and each publication.

All contributing organisations are named in the imprint section at the end of each publication and their logos are on the cover page;

Under ‘authors’, the experts who developed the approach are named

Under ‘writer’, the writer is named.

Those who contributed to the peer review, and particularly the external reviewers, are acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.

Joint publications with partner organisations: In principle, the PRG aspires to joint publications with the responsible partner organisations. However, particularly where several partner organisations, from different countries, are involved, the approval process can become overly complex, leading to unreasonable delays. To avoid this, the submitting experts should seek approval and involvement of their partner organisations early on in the process.