Unique IDs for web services like OpenSearch

[Ruth Duerr]

Hi,

I am a member of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (http://www.esipfed.org/).  As a group we try to "make data matter" as the saying goes, working on topics like data management principles for data creators, data providers, and data users, data citation guidelines, etc.  In particular, we are working to improve the transparency and reproducibility of research that uses data in the Earth sciences.  OpenSearch is one of the web service standards widely used in our domain to facilitate queries across data repositories and ultimately to deliver data to users.  We have best practice quidelines, etc. for its use.  However, in order to advance our goals further we need to include versioning and unique identifiers into the specification, so that changes to the behavior of a service are immediately and transparently made visible.  Any suggestions for how best to go about making that happen?

Thanks!

Ruth