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This work contrasts the scientific standing of the USA and Russia in 146 scientific disciplines. We consider four dimensions of competitive positioning: the contribution to global scientific advancement, the researchers’ productivity, the scientific specialization indexes, and the efficiency in resource allocation across disciplines. Differently from previous literature, we use discipline-normalized output to input indicators, thus avoiding distortions due to different intensities of publication across disciplines. Results show that the USA outperforms Russia in contribution to world scholarly impact in all but four disciplines, and is more productive in all but two disciplines. The USA is less efficient in allocating resources to the disciplines where it performs better, probably due to its higher research diversification.