Preprint: how to cite in Chicago Style – author-date (17th ed.)?

Create a spot-on reference in Chicago 18, 17 and 16

Select a source type:

Book Website Journal article Video (online)

Archival document Blog post Book Book chapter Complete reference Conference paper Copyright certificate Court case Dictionary Dictionary entry Disc Dissertation / Thesis Encyclopedia Encyclopedia article Extended abstract of dissertation Image Journal article Law / Act Newspaper article Patent Podcast Preprint Press release Religious text Report Social media post Software Standard Video (online) Video game Website

General rules

The word 'preprint' may designate a great number of types of sources planned to be published. Most often, these are the preprint of a book and the preprint of an article in a scholarly journal.

To reference a preprint of a book (a book already submitted for publication but not printed yet) according to the rules of Chicago Style – author-date (17th ed.), use the following template:

Author. Forthcoming. Title. City: Publisher.

In this case, the word 'Forthcoming' is put in place of the year, as the year of publication is yet to be known.

The preprints of scholarly articles are often published in specialised databases where their text can be read or reviewed. To reference such a source in a bibliography, use the following template:

Author. Year of publication in the database. "Title." Preprint. URL or Name of the Database.

Example in a list of references

Deya, Parijat, Tobias Hansena, and Mykola Shpot. 2020. "Operator Expansions, Layer Susceptibility and Two-Point Functions in BCFT." Preprint. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.11253.pdf.