Abstract: To understand the situation of the financial loss caused by the outflow of scientific articles published in foreign journals, a model for evaluating it based on literature loss was established in this study. Firstly, Loss of single equivalent for single outflow article includes publication fee, counter purchase fee and translation fee. The total loss of outflow was calculated using Equivalent loss of single article multiplying by number of outflow articles. Equivalent loss of single article was 3 348 yuan. The total number of outflow articles in agricultural engineering field published in foreign journals was 1991 in 2012, and its total financial losses were 6.67 million. And the total loss for all disciplines was 733 million, which originated from state scientific program, leading to loss of state resource. Therefore, we encourage appropriate amount of scientific articles published in foreign journals for international communication, but not the blind pursuit of SCI papers.