Background: The Impact Factor is calculated and published as part of the Journal Citation Report by a commercial company, Thompson ISI, each year in June. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) received its first Impact Factor in 2007. In a recent article in The Lancet Richard Horton noted, 'In 2007, CDSR had an impact factor of 4.65 (14th place in the general medicine category, the same group as The Lancet). In 2008, it rose to 5.18 (12th). In 2009, it rose again to 5.65 (11th). The CDSR is improving its quality year-on-year.’(1)

Methods: Citation data taken from the ISI Web of Science covering the years 2007 to 2010 (data for 2010 will not be available until June 2011) will be analyzed in order to identify which individual articles, subject areas and review groups have contributed most to the rise in the Impact Factor of the CDSR.

Results: Can the rise in impact factor be attributed to a small number of review groups or has each individual review group contributed? Has the CDSR impact factor relied on a small number of highly cited articles? Should highly cited articles influence the topic areas where future review articles should be commissioned?

Conclusions: Conclusions will be drawn from the analysis once the data is made available from Thompson ISI in June 2011.

Reference

1. HortonR. (2010) Offline: what about the football? The Lancet, 376 (9735), 80.