At Books4Languages, we’ve created a new errata tool which we hope will make it easier for anyone to contribute feedback to our peer-reviewed Books4Languages textbooks and to stay in the loop on what we do with your suggestion.
Our books are written and reviewed by educators and experts, but as with all professional-grade textbooks, errors may get overlooked or new developments may change how topics are interpreted. We are committed to being transparent about errata, and we invite readers to suggest content updates through our errata tool for our experts to review.
Errata review process
All errata suggestions are reviewed by our subject matter experts (unless the suggestion is a typo that doesn’t require subject matter expertise to evaluate). It can take a few weeks for the subject matter experts to review the suggestions, as many of them are actively teaching. Based on their feedback, we make any changes deemed necessary in our online books as soon as possible; then, we release updated print books and online PDFs each September for all books that need them. Only making PDF and print updates once per year enables us to do larger, more cost-effective print runs so we can keep prices low for students who prefer to purchase print copies. It also keeps the PDFs as consistent as possible for students and professors throughout the academic year.
Features of the new errata tool
Our new errata tool makes it easier for readers to participate in this process. We’ve listened to user feedback and simplified the form, removing extraneous fields so it’s quick and efficient for you to share your content suggestions. We also keep you updated on what’s happening with your submission: we’ll email you each time the status of your submission changes, so you’ll know in real-time when it’s reviewed, whether the change was accepted, the reason why if it’s not accepted, and when our content has been updated to reflect the change.
The new, streamlined errata tool also allows our content management team to process information more quickly and easily, which makes the book update process more efficient and leads to faster answers to your suggestions.
And the tool doesn’t only support our books. You can also now report errata directly from assessments in Books4Languages Tutor, our learning technology tool, into the new errata tool so our content team can track your submissions more efficiently, and you can stay updated on the status of your suggestions.
Finding the tool
You can get to the new errata tool by visiting any book page and clicking “Errata” or scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking “Submit a suggestion.” You will need to log in to your account (or create a free account) to suggest a correction — this is so we can follow up with you and keep you in the loop.
You can also view the current list of suggestions and see their status by clicking “Errata list” on your book page. Take a look at all of the suggestions that others have made since the last new PDF release. You can filter by date, type of correction, and status to explore what items other people are noticing or thinking about in regards to the text. You can also always view the status of your suggestions on this page.
We value you
We believe our users have the right to know how their educational resources are improving, and it’s important to us to stay connected to the Books4Languages community — especially those who care enough to spend time helping improve our textbooks. The new and improved errata tool better reflects how much we value our readers.
If you have any questions about the errata tool or anything else Books4Languages-related, feel free to contact us at abc @abc.com