Textbook Research Associates

Connecting the classroom to the working world · Established 1987

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For Publishers, Authors, and Editors

You are preparing a new edition. The manuscript is sound, the author is respected, and the reviews from the academic board are favorable. The question those reviews cannot answer is the one your adopters care about most: does this still describe how the work is done? That is the question we are built to answer.

What a Commission Includes

StageWhat You Receive
Scoping We review your chapter outline or current edition and agree with you on the procedures, tools, and standards most at risk of being out of date.
Practitioner Identification We locate working practitioners with verifiable standing in the relevant field and confirm their credentials before any interview.
Field Interviews We conduct structured, recorded interviews against your outline, typically five to twenty practitioners depending on the breadth of the subject.
Findings Report A written report, organized to your table of contents, marking each point as Current, Drifting, or Outdated, with sourced practitioner testimony for every claim.
Revision Notes Specific, quotable passages and examples your authors may cite or adapt, cleared for use, with attribution handled to your standard.

The Three-Mark System

Every procedure we examine is returned to you under one of three plain marks. We have used the same three since 1991 and see no reason to change them.

Current

Practitioners confirm the textbook's description matches present practice. No action required.

Drifting

Practice is moving away from the description. Still defensible for this edition, but flagged for the next.

Outdated

Practitioners no longer perform the procedure as described, or at all. Recommended for revision before the edition prints.

When to Commission

  • Before a major new edition, while the manuscript can still change.
  • When adopters or reviewers report that graduates feel underprepared.
  • When a field has absorbed a new tool, regulation, or standard that your current edition predates.
  • When a competing title is winning adoptions on the strength of feeling more current than yours.
"The report paid for itself the first time a sales representative could tell a department that our procedures had been verified in the field that year. The competing book could not say the same." -- Senior Editor, professional and trade division

Confidentiality

Our engagements are confidential. We do not announce who we work for, we do not reuse one publisher's commissioned findings for another, and we do not retain rights to the reports we deliver. What you commission is yours.

Request a Scoping Conversation

Tell us the title, the field, and the edition you are planning. There is no charge to discuss whether a study makes sense.

Write to the research office »

Textbook Research Associates · 114 Stanhope Building, Suite 7 · Established 1987
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