The Western European science policy establishment often claims that US arti
cles are more Frequently cited than articles of the European Union's scient
ists because they are published in journals with a large number of US publi
cations and that these journals are forming the 'core' of the SCI.
For the disciplines covered by the SCI, no significant correlation has been
found between the ratio of the average number of citations per publication
for publications with at least one EU address and at least one US address,
respectively, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ratio of the co
rresponding number of publications per journal.