Objectives: The objective of this study was to analyze the differences in social media attention, news attention, readership, and number of citations between open-access and subscription-based randomized control trials (RCTs) examining rotator cuff pathology. We hypothesize that open access articles will have higher attention scores and readership, but closed access subscription-based articles will have higher citation rates.



Methods: A PubMed search was conducted to identify RCTs on rotator cuff tears. Using the Altmetric Explorer Database, metrics such as Altmetric Attention score (AAS), news mentions, X mentions, Mendeley readers, and Dimensions citations were extracted. A negative binomial regression adjusted for time since publication was used to compare metrics between open and closed access articles.



Results: : Of 218 articles analyzed, 39% were open access, and 61% were closed access. Open access publications had higher costs and significantly higher mean AAS’s (42 ± 190 vs 15 ± 36), news mentions (2.6 ± 17 vs 0.48 ± 4.4), X mentions (45 ± 160 vs 19 ± 33), and Mendeley readers (120 ± 110 vs 87 ± 67) compared to closed access publications (p<0.05). However, the mean dimensions citations between open access vs closed access (29 ± 45 vs 27 ± 27) was not significantly different (p=0.554).



Conclusions: Open access articles have higher attention scores while maintaining comparable citation numbers compared to closed access articles.



Level of Evidence: Level 3