Universities do research, and publications in major journals are the units of outcome. It is not surprising to put this on the university website because it is

Universities do research, and publications in major journals are the units of outcome. It is not surprising to put this on the university website because it is good exposure. The people who browse university websites are often other academics, so this is indeed an announcement to the broad scientific community and brings prestige to the university. This would be comparable to winning some scientific prizes, since they are accomplishments that are hard and competitive to achieve. Of course the general public does not care about which scientists win which prizes. This is all part of marketing to get broad exposure to the scientific community first, general public second.