Funny this topic comes up right now.

A few days ago, Wikipedia (arguably the biggest provider of COiNS) decided
to discontinue it because they've discovered that generating the COinS
using their decrepit infrastructure uses up so much processing power that
attempts to edit pages with lots of citations time out. See [1, 2]. That
said, there is some movement to restore them once they get their act
together and improve their infrastructure. The big irony is that this move
was driven by editors and regular contributors (it doesn't affect anyone
not "signed into" Wikipedia) that is, exactly those users who *ought* to
make the most regular use of COinS to actually retrieve cited material...

Just by coincidence, we finally engaged on a project to better process
COinS. As is, we're just linking to the OpenURL resolver, which is hit and
miss - that said, it's a facility that's used. We're now keeping
statistics, and for just 10 editions we've had over 5,000 clicks in the
last three month alone.  But we have additional options - Link/360 being
one for SS clients, and Summon another. We think we can do a much better
job at resolving COinS with a combination of these services. None of this
depends on the specific COinS format, of course - any suitable microformat
would work, too.

 - Godmar

[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19262
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Citation/core#Disappointed


On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Bigwood, David <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I've used the COinS Generator at OCLC for years. Now it is gone. Any
> suggestions on how I can get an occasional COinS for use in our
> bibliography? Do any of the citation managers generate COinS?
>
>
>
> Or is this just an old unused metadata format that should be replaced by
> something else?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dave Bigwood
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Lunar and Planetary Institute
>