"Cite this record": citation metadata (Highwire tags + COinS) and a copyable citation so researchers and Wikipedia cite Cedwyn

Topic: making each Cedwyn record/research page one click to save in Zotero and one paste to cite. Citations from students, family historians, local-history journals and Wikipedia editors are durable links and AI-visible sources. Skill written 27 Oct 2026 (harvest run).

What the evidence states

• Princeton CDH tested the formats, 12 Nov 2025 (read): Highwire citation_* meta tags, Schema.org JSON-LD, COinS, unAPI+MARC and unAPI+Dublin Core.
• Highwire tags are easy and widely read, but Zotero could not detect the item type from them, and the same went for Dublin Core.
• COinS (one <span class="Z3988"> per item) gave the correct item type, worked for single pages and bulk saves from a results list, and needed no extra requests. It completes within a second of the click.
• Their verdict: COinS is "one of the most effective" ways to get Zotero integration, even though it is old.
• Zotero's own guide ("Exposing metadata", read) supports Highwire tags (citation_title, citation_author, citation_publication_date, citation_pdf_url, citation_keywords…), COinS, unAPI, and embedded RDF/JSON-LD.
• Wikipedia's citation tool runs on Zotero. Citoid (VisualEditor's automatic "Cite" button) is built on Zotero's translation server and translators. MediaWiki states the best results come when a site's URLs are already readable by Zotero (Citoid page, read). So clean metadata means an editor who pastes a Cedwyn URL gets a correct reference instead of a bare link.
• Google Scholar is not the target. Its inclusion rules (read) require scholarly papers with real named authors in citation_author, plus a citation_publication_date, and they treat Dublin Core as a last resort. Cedwyn pages are records and reports with no named author, so keep Scholar for Zenodo deposits (see zenodo-doi-scholar-argentine-repositories.md).
• No measured "citations per month" lift from adding these tags was found. Treat this as low-cost hygiene with a known mechanism (Zotero/Citoid), not a proven traffic driver.

How to do it

1. Per page <head>, Highwire tags (cheap, also read by many scrapers and AI crawlers): - citation_title = the page's own title - citation_author = the organisation as author, e.g. "Cedwyn Estate records" (never a person's name) - citation_publication_date = YYYY/MM/DD of first publication - citation_online_date = last update - citation_publisher = "Cedwyn" - citation_language = cy/en/es - citation_keywords = place-names; separated - citation_pdf_url for downloadable report PDFs only
2. COinS span in the body for the correct item type (put it next to the cite box, visually hidden): - ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004 - rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dc - rft.type=webpage (or document/report) - rft.title, rft.date, rft.identifier=<canonical URL>, rft.language, rft.publisher

On list pages (catalogue, missing-records register) put one span per row so Zotero offers a multi-item save. 3. Visible "Cite this record" box at the foot of record pages, in the page language, with a Copy button. Example (the date varies): Cedwyn (2026) "<Record title>", catalogue ID <WP-87>, cedwyn.bucklerfamily.estate/<path>/ (accessed <today>). - Offer one format (Harvard-style). A menu of APA/MLA/Chicago is a chore. - Include the catalogue ID, because stable IDs are what historians cite. 4. Stable URLs: never change a record's path. If one moves, 301 it. Citations decay into dead links otherwise (see link-reclamation-unlinked-mentions-dead-urls.md). 5. Test: - install nothing on the server. On a desktop with the Zotero Connector, open a page and check the icon shows the right type (web page/report), the title and the date; - Wikipedia test: in any sandbox (not article space), insert a citation from the URL with VisualEditor's Cite, then read the result. Do not save it into an article. - Also run curl -s URL | grep -c citation_title in the build check. 6. Machine copies: keep the same fields in the page's JSON-LD (CreativeWork/Dataset with name, datePublished, identifier, publisher, inLanguage). The DB is the single source, so all three are rendered from one record row.

Pitfalls

• Don't put a person's name in citation_author. Use the organisation.
• Escape quotes/angle brackets in meta values. Welsh diacritics are fine in UTF-8.
• A "cite" box must not explain the site or itself; it is a citation, not a note (no-self-explaining-pages rule).
• Don't edit Wikipedia ourselves to add Cedwyn citations (COI; see wikimedia-commons-wikidata-heritage-coi.md). The goal is that others' citations come out clean.

How we apply it to Cedwyn

• Status at 27 Oct 2026: /, /research/missing-records/ and /ebooks/ each carry JSON-LD but no citation_* tags and no COinS (curl check). The live site's pages have catalogue IDs (WP-…, MR-…), which is ideal citation material.
• Proposal (onpage flywheel / docs worker, PROPOSED):
• add a build-time template partial that renders Highwire tags + one COinS span + the trilingual Cite box from each record's DB row (title, IDs, first-published date, language);
• apply it to the evidence catalogue, the missing-records register (one span per row), research reports and the place pages;
• leave out /ebooks/ (a sales page, not a record).
• Cost: one partial plus the DB fields that already exist. No install, zero spend.
• Who it helps: family-history societies, local-history journals, students (TES/Hwb resources) and Wikipedia editors writing about Llandough/Tŷ Mawr. Each gets a correct citation with our URL in one click. That is the citation-led authority the AI-answers skill wants.
• Editorial: the citation text uses page titles only; no banned words; never names the project lead; no outbound links (the box cites us, it doesn't link out).

Sources

• Princeton CDH, "Making Research Easier to Save: A Guide to Zotero Integration for Academic Websites", 12 Nov 2025: cdh.princeton.edu (read)
• Zotero, "Exposing metadata": zotero.org (read)
• MediaWiki, Citoid: mediawiki.org (read)
• Google Scholar inclusion guidelines: scholar.google.com (read)

Raw Markdown: cite-this-record-zotero-coins-citation-metadata.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json