A scientific article should report something new, some facts or experiments, right? But what if not, and is it generally quoted higher? It’s about review articles (review).
Alternatively, the review contains an exhaustive analysis of the literature for X years in a specific field. No new data – just (well, yes, of course, simple) compiling known data from the literature. A kind of training manual, which gives an understanding of the state of affairs in the field as a whole, well, options for reading more. And a good help for writing future works or articles.
In a “regular” article, the number of references to literature is measured in pairs (of course, it all depends). In a review article, this number can easily exceed a couple of hundred. That is, the authors need to at least read hundreds of works, in reality, let them through them and analyze them. The number of authors is also much smaller – usually there are two of them in reviews, and in ordinary articles there may well be 6-8. The number of published text in reviews is dozens of pages, in articles – several. From the unusual: often in the reviews they publish more photos of the authors or their biographies.
Reviews often appear in separate, review magazines. Their citation and formal indicators are much higher than ordinary articles: one of the most chemical journals of the Journal of the American Chemical Society is impact factor 14 (that is, on average, each article is quoted 14 times from there); Chemical Reviews – 54 (above Nature and Science).