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.

Studies on scientists' practices of Public Engagement (PE) have pointed to variations in PE between disciplines. If variations found at the individual level are reflected at the institutional level, then research institutes (RIs) in Social Sciences (and Humanities) should perform higher in PE and be more involved in dialogue with the public. Using a nearly complete sample of research institutes in Portugal 2014 (n=234, 61% response rate), we investigate how public engagement varies in intensity, type of activities and target audiences across scientific areas. Three benchmark findings emerge. Firstly, the Social Sciences and the Humanities profile differently in PE between themselves and from other sciences. Secondly, the Social Sciences overall perform more PE activities, but the Natural Sciences mobilise more effort for PE. Thirdly, while the Social Sciences play a greater role in civic public engagement, the Natural Sciences are more likely to perform educational activities. Finally, this study shows that the overall size of RIs, available PE funding and PE staffing are contributing factors to the culture of outreach and public engagement at the institutional level.

No abstract