CMOS18 CSL has no way to distinguish between an article that is genuinely “ahead of print” (temporarily online while awaiting issue assignment) and an article from a journal that publishes exclusively online and will never have a volume or issue number. For the latter case, the “ahead of print” label is not just cosmetically wrong - it’s semantically incorrect, as the article is fully and permanently published.
“Ahead of print” behavior (new to CMOS18): Using the Chicago 18th edition CSL, a journal article that has a publication date and a DOI but not volume/issue number automatically has “ahead of print” in the citation. This makes sense for print publications that publish online ahead of print, per Chicago’s new rules (14.75, 14.76). These articles are publishing online, not in an issue or volume, before also being published in print.
Problem: However, this is incorrect for journals that publish on a rolling basis (i.e., no issues/volumes) and do not print their publications. For these, the citations automatically say “ahead of print,” but the articles are already in the final, published form online and will not be printed.
In these cases, the behavior is incorrect due to the “ahead of print” language.
Using status (does not work): I know I can set status to something like Published online, but that doesn’t follow CMOS18’s rules either. Is there built-in support for somehow only removing “ahead of print” in these cases that I am overlooking? Based on my reading of CMOS18’s preference for concise citations, it seems ideal to simply remove “ahead of print” vs. add something a status like “published online.”
Question: Is there a reason why “ahead of print” is the default behavior for these publications, instead of using status to selectively identify publications that are ahead of print ? It seems ideal to me to selectively apply this label, rather than have it be the default for all journal articles published with a DOI but without an issue.