The Portuguese university and research system have undergone significant changes over the last decades. Under competitive national funding schemes, funding for research (basic and project) is currently attributed based on levels of research excellence, of which public engagement plans and activities have become a part of. While one could expect that excellent institutes would tendentially engage more with wider audiences, the ongoing competition for excellent research, staff, students and funding might leave little time for public communication. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between public communication activities and research excellence, using data from the MORE-PE project on Portuguese institutes. We start the chapter with a snapshot of developments of the Portuguese research system in the 20th century. We then compare public communication activities among institutes evaluated as ‘excellent’ and ‘less-than excellent’.

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