As a side note, one of the books they give as an example is The Time Traveller's Wife, which involves "a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably", which certainly sounds like an SF-y premise.
Format adaptations have catapulted some great SF into the pop culture stardom:
The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, and though looked upon favorably, it is rarely mentioned today without also mentioning the 1938 radio broadcast.
The Wizard of Oz (Baum 1900) is more famous for its 1939 film.
In more modern times, Johnny Mnemonic (1995 film from "Burning Chrome", Gibson 1986), Snowpiercer (2013 film from "Le Transperceneige", Lob and Rochette 1982), and The Martian (2015 film from "The Martian", Weir 2011) have all increased SF visibility through film adaptations.
Without format shift, would general SF readers have pursued these works independent from the film? Probably. Would these works have entered pop culture and have been sought by the everyman, even the ones who don't routinely buy books or enjoy reading? Less likely.
Of the five top grossing films, Avatar and Jurassic World are very clearly science fiction, Star Wars and The Avengers are arguably science fiction. It's only Titanic that couldn't be claimed to be science fiction.
The situation is probably similar for TV Series too.
The status problems of science fiction are arguably related to its extreme popularity.
2015 is too soon to really judge it's staying power and it's hard to judge how much of the praise is because it's non-Western.
On the other hand, 99% of SF does not have much literary merit, even the well regarded stuff, so if you're interested in the cross-section, Literature might be the more reasonable department to file it under.
The authors that can combine the two are very rare - Wolfe, Douglas Adams, Ursula K. Le Guin, and often Russian authors, though that might be from the translation too.