Whether to use numbers or abbreviated names as a citation style? Many papers use numbered references (e.g.: [1], [2]). Is this considered a good style or even a rule or would it be acceptable to use abbreviated names of the authors and year of publication (e.g. [Smith09] for J. Smith, 2009)? I find the abbreviated name reference style a lot more informative as after a while of reading papers on a given topic it’s usually easy to identify the cited publication without the need to look at the full bibliography.  I have seen this style used in books and some editorials but it is not common.
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.