COinS

Not to be confused with Coins.

A window of a referrer is open on a wikipedia article using citation templates with embedded COinS tags
An example of referrers acting on a wikipedia article using citation templates with embedded COinS tags

ContextObjects in Spans (COinS) is a method to embed bibliographic metadata in the HTML code of web pages. This allows bibliographic software to publish machine-readable bibliographic items and client reference management software to retrieve bibliographic metadata. The metadata can also be sent to an OpenURL resolver. This allows, for instance, searching for a copy of a book at a specific library.[1]

  1. ^ Chudnov, Daniel (2006-07-14). "COinS for the Link Trail". Library Journal: 8–10. Archived from the original on 2006-10-22.