This project strengthened the research opportunities, and to ensured a high quality in the academic issues addressed, by establishing arenas where practitioners, researchers and decision makers can meet. The goals were to create more knowledge about open youth work, about youth, and to disseminate this knowledge. The purpose of this project was to build and establish solid and sustainable arenas for a functional interaction between the system of education and representatives of the field of practices. The partnership seeked to publish an academic journal. The academic journal came out of an international working group of youth workers, those that work with young people, NGO’s and academics. The starting point was to explore, research and share youth work philosophy and methodology from both the youth worker and youth work academic perspective. Its further purpose was to establish a grounded body of knowledge that is based in practice and research, both of which should and could be used to inform social policy makers. Youth workers should be able to share results of their work, and also be have a critical view on their work. In order to have a a high quality content of the academic journal, we wanted youth workers to be involved in writing articles for the AJ, as well as being peer reviewers. For an academic journal, peer reviewing is a sign of quality, and we aimed at a high academic level. Still we wanted the perspectives of youth workers to be represented, also as reviewers of the academic articles. The peer reviewer role is a process that lasts more than a year, and requires commitment from both writers and reviewers. We used academic peers as reviewers. In addition we strongly supported that youth workers have a peer reviewer role, and they also should be writing articles, or be represented by the support of co- writers. Co- writing is a process where a researcher cooperates with the youth worker, in order to develop research which reflects the reality of the youth workers. Youth workers have normally no experience in peer- reviewing and co - writing, we, therefore, implemented training in order to prepare them properly for the task. The training course also had participants from other countries in the Baltic area, and through this extension we were able to enhance and expand the network. The training course topics were about the two different roles in developing the academic journal, peer reviewing and co- writing. There is normally no requirement for youth workers that they should master the peer reviewing role, and there is certainly not any written recipe for how to review with the eyes of the youth worker. The second part of the training course, was about co writing. Youth workers are not necessarily trained in cooperation with researchers in a co writing process. Whereas youth workers must create a language for their experiences, researchers must adapt their vocabulary and models of analysis to the youth worker's reality. Hence, the training course was for both parties, but the majority of participants were youth workers that are recruited as peer reviewers.