"The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson Reuters. Impact factors are calculated yearly for those journals that are indexed in Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Reports. In a given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations to those papers that were published during the two preceding years." _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor

Springer launched Nanoscale Research Letters at the middle of 2006. Therefore, it was nice to know:

"Despite publishing for only six months of the two-year period covered by the 2007 Impact Factor, Thomson Scientific has taken the rare step of awarding one to Nanoscale Research Letters: 2.158*." _Springer

The 2008 NRL impact factor was a disappointing one. Springer tried its best to make a positive announcement still:

"Despite publishing more than four times as many papers in 2007 compared with 2006, Nanoscale Research Letters has maintained a 1.731 Impact Factor in 2008."

NRL has similar amounts of papers published in 2007 and 2008. Accordingly, its third impact factor is supposed to be good.

What do you think? Please take our poll on the 2009 NRL impact factor and let me know your expectation.

My personal analysis looks to a number around 3.