How much does a citation cost?: A case study based on CONICET's budget

Abstract

Introduction: CONICET has played a fundamental role in training numerous researchers and promoting science in Argentine society. Objective: To describe the relative cost per published article and per citation received for articles published by authors affiliated with CONICET. Methods: A bibliometric study was conducted to analyze CONICET's scientific production in the Scopus database and its budget from 2016 to 2021. Results: A decrease in CONICET's budget was observed, which only recovered in the last year without reaching the historical maximum studied. Furthermore, despite an increase in the number of articles published, citations decreased. The theoretical cost of an article and a bibliographic citation can be presented. For example, in 2021, the cost of publishing an article was $41,014.09 USD, and the cost of a citation was $9,442.77 USD. Conclusions: The budgetary expenses of a governmental institution with thousands of workers cannot be minimized to simple final products such as articles when considering other costs such as salaries, awareness campaigns, building construction and maintenance expenses, or even non-scientific expenses such as water bills for an institute. However, it is possible to approach a theoretical cost of the articles and citations produced by Argentine scientists.