Background: Citation analysis can provide an insight into the publishing habits of the research community. Information is available not only on publishing authors and research groups, but also on those who are citing particular pieces of work. The impact factor is an aggregate citation measure, and is used, and mis-used, in a variety of settings. Looking at the 2008 impact factor for The Cochrane Library of 5.182, released in June 2008, what does this, and the following impact factor results tell us about the citation activity of The Cochrane Library? Objectives: To deconstruct the impact factor of The Cochrane Library (based on citation data published by ISI in June 2009), analyzing the characteristics of the publishing and citing authors, and the distribution of citations to those articles. The appropriateness of the impact factor as a measure of average article quality will be discussed, as will the profound effect of cited journal title variations on the overall level of reported article citedness. Methods: Journal and category data will be downloaded from ISI’s Web of Science, published by Thompson Reuters in June 2009. Data will be imported and analyzed in commonly available software, to examine the differences and similarities between the groups of citing and cited authors, and between the general and cited reference search. Conclusions: Previous studies on other journals have demonstrated a highly skewed distribution of citations to articles within the impact factor time-frame. Will The Cochrane Library see a repeat of last year (ranked 14th in the group)? What will this year’s impact factor tell us about the counting method for Cochrane reviews? Are there any other scales and ranking systems, providing a more accurate picture of citation activity?