Academics struggle to properly cite and reference unpublished or in-progress research without clear formatting guidelines

Researchers and graduate students frequently need to reference unpublished articles, preprints, or works-in-progress in their papers but lack clear, standardized guidance on how to format these citations correctly. This creates confusion about citation style compliance, potential rejection of papers, and wasted time searching through fragmented documentation across different citation systems (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). Current solutions are scattered across multiple style guides and forum posts, making it difficult to find authoritative answers quickly.