Open AccessPublic communication by research institutes compared across countries and sciences: Building capacity for engagement or competing for visibility?
Author(s) -
Marta Entradas,
Martín W. Bauer,
Colm O’Muircheartaigh,
Frank Marcinkowski,
Asako Okamura,
Giuseppe Pellegrini,
John C. Besley,
Luisa Massarani,
Pedro Russo,
Anthony Dudo,
Barbara Saracino,
Carla Silva,
Kei Kano,
Luís Amorim,
Massimiano Bucchi,
Ahmet Süerdem,
Tatsuo Oyama,
YuhYuh Li
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0235191
Subject(s) - variety (cybernetics) , public relations , political science , discipline , duty , visibility , public engagement , science communication , happening , scholarly communication , sociology , social science , publishing , geography , science education , artificial intelligence , meteorology , computer science , law , art , performance art , art history
Leading academic institutions, governments, and funders of research across the world have spent the last few decades fretting publicly about the need for scientists and research organisations to engage more widely with the public and be open about their research. While a global literature asserts that public communication has changed from a virtue to a duty for scientists in many countries and disciplines, our knowledge about what research institutions are doing and what factors drive their ‘going public’ is very limited. Here we present the first cross-national study of N = 2,030 research institutes within universities and large scientific organisations in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find that institutes embrace communication with non-peers and do so through a variety of public events and traditional news media–less so through new media channels–and we find variation across countries and sciences, yet these are less evident than we expected. Country and disciplinary cultures contribute to the level of this communication, as do the resources that institutes make available for the effort; institutes with professionalised staff show higher activity online. Future research should examine whether a real change in the organisational culture is happening or whether this activity and resource allocation is merely a means to increase institutional visibility.