The director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) was chosen as a finalist last week (June 18) to receive a national public service award for developing PubMed Central.
"I think it's a recognition of the value of PubMed Central,"
David Lipman, who launched PubMed Central in 2000, told
The Scientist. "For that, I'm really thrilled."
The award, called the Service to America Citizen Services Medal, has been presented annually for the last six years by the Washington DC-based nonprofit,
Partnership for Public Service, to a federal employee who is "making high-impact contributions critical to the safety, health, and well-being of Americans," according to the organization's web site.
PubMed Central holds approximately 1.7 million full-text articles relating to clinical and basic research; users access it to retrieve almost 700,000 articles a day.
"The Award Committee's recognition of Dr. Lipman is a potent reminder of the high value the American public places in being able to access and use the product of their collective investment in research," Heather Jones, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said in a press release.
Finalists in eight categories were recognized last week at a Capitol Hill breakfast sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service. After listening to the accomplishments of the other finalists, "I brought the program home and showed it to my kids," Lipman said, "so they can see what these talented, dedicated people are doing."
Correction (posted June 24): Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article incorrectly said that David Lipman founded PubMed. In fact, he founded PubMed Central. The Scientist regrets the error.