There is a lot of research done in this and other areas of Software Engineering. Problem is that it's usually locked away behind a huge paywall. If you're not affiliated with some university, you essentially have no access to it.
Another problem is that the research hasn't been collected into a manager-friendly tome like the Gang of Four book. The software industry is overflowing with snake oil, and we need to replace it with science if we want to see this turn into a real engineering discipline. I'm tired of bikeshedding and holy wars -- show me the science!
If it involves studying human behaviors, it's probably not going to be science. I would prefer the holy wars over some manager telling me it's been "proven" that one side is correct.
> Problem (as with all academic papers) is that, it's usually locked away behind a huge paywall.
This may be true for research in other domains but as a researcher in Computer Science I can assure you that the number of academic papers locked behind a paywall is negligible in CS. Only once was did I find a paper not available and I promptly received a copy by sending an e-mail to the authors of the paper.
My experience is the same. I work in NLP, and I've found that at least everything administered by ACL (probably our largest professional organization) is pretty much always available.
I love that about ACL. Not only is open-access good and nice and all that, but it also means I don't have to screw around with VPNs and such when I need to get an article while I'm at home.
The only thing I do not like about ACL is the fact that is not indexed in DBLP. I have a paper in one of the ACL affiliated conference and it does not show up. I have since then shifted from core NLP and it doesn't really matter but it would be nice to be consistent with other indexing mechanisms.
Out of curiosity - which area do you work in? Can you also post a couple of examples (from your area) of academic research papers not available for free download?
I've been out in the wilds of industry for a while now, so it's been a while since I needed to pay for something professionally... back in the halcyon days of academia, I worked in computational medicine and had (still have) interest in lingustics/neuroecon/neurosci and I still run into walls there occasionally. I can't cite specific examples for you, if I can't find it somebody I know can get me a copy.
> I worked in computational medicine and had (still have) interest in lingustics/neuroecon/neurosci and I still run into walls there occasionally.
Like I said earlier areas like computational Medicine, Biology and other such areas run into pay walls. CS research areas like theory, data mining, NLP etc. will rarely run into such problems.
There is a lot of research done in this and other areas of Software Engineering. Problem is that it's usually locked away behind a huge paywall. If you're not affiliated with some university, you essentially have no access to it.