The Angewandte chemie recently announced they beat the Journal of the Chemical Society (JACS) in the annual Journal Citation Reports impact factor competition (Link). This presents a problem because JACS on their website also announce victory (link), so what to do.

The Angewandte lists an IF of 10 in the category chemistry, multidisciplinary while JACS claims the title the most cited journal in chemistry based on an IF of 7.9.

Could be a category issue but be also beware that 18 out of the top-25 Angewandte articles are in fact reviews, minireviews or highlights. JACS on the other hand doesn't do reviews. Reviews easily accumulate citations but are not exactly the original research it should be about.

And what is the point of indexing citations anyway. Three points of criticism. Firstly, the most recent 2007 index is based on citations for the years 2005 and 2006 only. A citation in a 2007 journal for a 2004 article is irrelevant. Secondly, in a lot of journals citations are often just reading suggestions or a list of examples of similar work rather than references to relevant work. And lastly, referencing to reviews draws away the attention to the original breakthrough work.