Whether to use numbers or abbreviated names as a citation style?
The two systems are equally good but used in different communities/journals etc. You therefore need to check what is normally used in your field and when submitting manuscripts, of course, check what the specific journal uses. The fact that you say "most journals use" indicates you are in a field that uses numbered or Vancouver style (author-number) references. The author-date, or Harvard-system, is used by most journals in my field.