Abstract The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) published by Thomson Reuters is often used to evaluate the significance and performance of scientific journals. Besides methodological problems with the JIF, the critical issue is whether a single measure is sufficient for characterizing the impact of journals, particularly the impact of multidisciplinary and wide-scope journals that publish articles in a broad range of research fields. Taking Angewandte Chemie International Edition and the Journal of the American Chemical Society as examples, we examined the two journals' publication and impact profiles across the sections of Chemical Abstracts and compared the results with the JIF. The analysis was based primarily on Communications published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition and the Journal of the American Chemical Society during 2001 to 2005. The findings show that the information available in the Science Citation Index is a rather unreliable indication of the document type and is therefore inappropriate for comparative analysis. The findings further suggest that the composition of the journal in terms of contribution types, the length of the citation window, and the thematic focus of the journal in terms of the sections of Chemical Abstracts has a significant influence on the overall journal citation impact. Therefore, a single measure of journal citation impact such as the JIF is insufficient for characterizing the significance and performance of wide-scope journals. For the comparison of journals, more sophisticated methods such as publication and impact profiles across subject headings of bibliographic databases (e.g., the sections of Chemical Abstracts) are valuable.