Open access articles in radiology are cited, downloaded, and shared more than articles that require a subscription to access, according to Dutch research published online on 19 August in European Radiology.
A team led by Rayan Alkhawtani of the University Medical Center Groningen analyzed 500 original studies that had been published in European Radiology between April 23, 2015, and July 6, 2017. Of these articles, 86 were open access and 414 were available only with a subscription.
After performing linear regression analysis, the authors found that the open access articles were significantly more cited (beta coefficient = 3.588, p = 0.016), downloaded (beta coefficient = 759.801, p < 0.001), and shared (beta coefficient = 0.748, p = 0.002) than subscription access article. Also, they reported that articles from Europe or North America were significantly more frequently published as open access compared with articles that had corresponding authors from Asia.
![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
