Nature.com is this week recognised as the Best Science Website of 2008 in the annual Webby awards. Nature Publishing Group's website will receive its 'Oscar of the Internet' at the 12th Annual Webby Awards gala on 10 June in New York City.
The Webby Award winners are chosen by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), a global organization of industry experts and technology innovators. The winners were announced on the 6 May on the Webby Award website.
"Everyone at NPG is delighted that nature.com has been awarded a Webby, it's a real validation of our efforts," said Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of nature.com. "Our purpose as a publisher is to enable scientific and medical communication. If we can't help researchers to make the most of the web - the most powerful communication medium ever - then we wouldn't be doing our jobs. That's why nature.com is central to NPG's mission, and this welcome recognition will spur us on to try and achieve even more."
Nature.com serves almost 12 million visitors a month with over a million registered users, and is the gateway to NPG's broad offering of publications and services. The website provides access to all NPG publications including its flagship title Nature, the Nature research, Nature Reviews, and Nature Clinical Practice journals and a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. Gateways and databases include the Nature Reports series. Through Nature.com, users can access news and features from Nature News and visit Naturejobs, NPG's careers information and science recruitment website. NPG launched Connotea, the document tagging and social bookmarking web site in 2003. Nature Network, NPG's social networking service, is connecting scientists at a global and local level. The success of the weekly Nature Podcast has led to the construction of NPG's own in-house podcast studio. Nature.com also hosts a number of NPG blogs, the preprint service Nature Precedings, and country-focussed portals such as Nature China and Nature India. Nature.com links to scientific experiments and conferences hosted on Second Nature, NPG's three virtual islands in Second Life.
Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites. "The Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. The 12th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries.