This means that we don't have to agree on how to format citations, just how to structure the data contained in the citations. This is really important because different academies have different mandatory formats, for their papers.
Discussion
I went and checked on the common citation formats (APA, Chicago, MLA), and suggested some additions to include data needed to generate those. I've probably missed something. All three use the same basic data for web citations, but there is more variation for hardcopy publications.
I agree with the approach wholeheartedly. Let's define the citation data in machine-readable form, and let clients determine the best way to format it for use in a human-readable document.