Research assessment based on infrequent achievements: a comparison of the United States and Europe in terms of highly cited papers and Nobel Prizes

Research assessment becomes difficult as scientific progress driven by occasional but important discoveries cannot be immediately quantified and identified. Comparison of US and European research performance ratios expressed in terms of highly cited papers with Nobel Prize-winning discoveries in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine suggests that research success of United States is almost three times of Europe research success.