"Ahead of print" in CMS author-date

kadiddle · 2024-12-27T14:44:09+00:00

According to CMS sec. 14.75 (18th ed), a published journal article available online before the official print version is published should have a bibliographic entry that looks like this:

Lastname, Firstname. 2024. "Article title." Journal Title, ahead of print, date. https://doi.org/[whatever the known DOI is].

I'm trying to get the "ahead of print" into the citation, but "Status: ahead of print" in the Extra field doesn't do it. What's the correct way?

kadiddle · 2024-12-27T18:10:15+00:00

I discovered that I could achieve this entering "ahead of print, 2024" in the Pages field. Not really optimal, in my view, but it works.

bwiernik · 2024-12-27T18:51:07+00:00

The correct CSL way to do this is to enter this in Extra:
status: Ahead of print

kadiddle · 2024-12-27T19:50:25+00:00

That approach would be consistent with the approach used for other types of preprint -- but as I said, it doesn't work. At least not with CMS author-date, maybe it hasn't been implemented. You can test it, maybe there's something else going on in my data. In any case, my workaround is easy and does the job.

adamsmith · 2024-12-27T20:55:09+00:00

we just didn't add this for CMoS, yes. (I honestly think style guides should just give up on 'ahead of print'; enforcing different citations for this at a time when 99.999% of readers don't read articles in 'print' journals is silly. The piece has a DOI and is published as a version of record, it gets a journal article citation. Maybe it has an issue number, maybe it doesn't, who cares).

kadiddle · 2024-12-27T22:18:05+00:00

Thanks for explaining why the Extra field didn't work. We'll have to put up with the "ahead of print" problem, of course, but if anyone else looks for the solution, at least they'll find this thread.

(As for silly information, fortunately style guides are increasingly dumping books' "place of publication," which has been pointless since maybe the 1950s....)