What is JoVE impact factor?

Edit: March 18, 2011

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For some reasons google send me visitors looking for the impact factor of the journal of visualized experiments. I liked JoVE, and I was then disappointed when they were demanding money to watch such a beautiful videos of experimental protocols 'at the bench'. If you invented a new single-cell chromatin immuno-precipitation genome-wide sequencing, nobody is likely going to believe you, and a video protocol would clearly support the repeteatibility of your elegant benchwork. In this case, you might submit your video to Jove, which will peer-review it and, once published, will index it in pubmed for your future glory. So cool. But at this point, before your supervisor dispense you to run 20 plates on real-time PCR to concentrate on video-production, it will probably being asked to you something like:

Jove? WTF impact factor?

A google-second after your are reading me. Sorry but at the moment, there is no Jove IF, forget it. Impact factors are published every year in the Journal of Citation Reports, and are calculated according to the number of citations Jove received in the last two years.

Despite the first Jove's video dates back in 2006, at the moment Jove is not included in the last JCR list (2009). This surprised me, therefore I looked for JoVE citations on ISI Web of Knowledge.

JoVE citations (2006-2009) accessed October 2010

Results (citations 2006-2009)
- Nature:  10535
- Science: 10268
- Cell:     2606
- JBC:     16110
- JoVE:        0

I wonder if I'm doing correctly, 10k citations for a top scientific magazine seems really nothing to me. Anyway, I didn't find any citation for JoVE. This surprises me even more, but I remember having tried to cite a internet site in a paper and the journal editor asked me to remove it because they were not accepting sites without .edu domain in their prestigious papers. This could explain also why your supervisor promptly asked what the hell impact factor before even considering what you were proposing. Perhaps, and I hope, the things are going to change in future. The new 2010 edition of Journal Citation Reports will be made available summer 2011. Please come back later (and correctly cite the work that is relevant for your research)

Update: November 24, 2010
A comment by Nikita pushed me to better check JoVE citations. Indeed, using google scholar, one can clearly see several video articles being cited (link). For instance, the article "In vivo Bioluminescent Imaging of Mammary Tumors Using IVIS Spectrum" has been cited by a paper in BMC microbiology. On the other side, looking for Jove, or j.vis.exp or the full title, does not turn any citation according ISI. Is there a bug? According to my referrals, hundreds of people are asking for JoVE IF, therefore I' making a formal claim: please ISI, fix it, thanks!