How much did somebody's research cost? -- A cynical take on quantitative research assessment.

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What is this calculator about?

How accurate is the data?

Results

– Total cost

– Average per article (all determined)

– Average per article with an APC > 0

– Articles with a determined cost

– Cost per log-citation (log₁₀)

– Cost per year since first publication

Count first-authorship papers only towards costs

Your ORCID iD (optional, for first-author filter)

Cost distribution

Cost vs. actual citations

Each dot is one article: its APC cost against how many times it has actually been cited.

Journal mean citedness vs. actual citations

Each dot is one article: its journal's mean citedness against how many times this specific article has actually been cited.

Open access type breakdown

Open access type by publication year

Free PDF availability

Total cost by open access type

Which open access types account for the money actually spent, rather than just the number of articles.

Citations by cost tier

Each violin shows the full citation distribution for articles in that cost tier (not just an average), with a solid dash marking the median.

Cost by publication year

Total spending on articles published in each year.

Where these costs come from: OpenAlex is queried for each article, which in turn sources the figures below from OpenAPC (actual APC payments reported by libraries and institutions), publisher-supplied list prices, and DOAJ (for the free-to-publish check). See the "Price source" column for which of these applies to each row, and the glossary above for what each label means.

#	Reference / matched title	DOI	OA type	APC cost	Price source	Citations	Journal mean citedness (2yr)	Altmetric	Free PDF	Notes	Hide