ResearchBot: Bridging the Gap between Academic Research and Practical Programming Communities

Software developers commonly rely on platforms like Stack Overflow for problem-solving and learning. However, academic research is an untapped resource that could greatly benefit industry practitioners. The challenge lies in connecting the innovative insights from academia to real-world problems faced by developers. This project introduces ResearchBot, a tool designed to bridge this academia-industry gap. ResearchBot employs a modular approach, encompassing understanding questions, curating queries to obtain relevant papers in the CrossRef repository, summarizing paper content, and finally answering user questions based on paper summaries. The core objective of ResearchBot is to democratize access to academic knowledge for industry professionals. By providing concise summaries of cutting-edge research directly in response to SE-related questions, ResearchBot facilitates the application of academic insights to practical contexts. Ultimately, it aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry, using research evidence to support learning and decision-making in software development.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-04-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/botse67031.2025.00017
Primary Topic
Online Learning and Analytics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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ResearchBot: Bridging the Gap between Academic Research and Practical Programming Communities

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Online Learning and Analytics
article

ResearchBot: Bridging the Gap between Academic Research and Practical Programming Communities

Chris Brown, Huayu Liang, Swetha Rajeev, Ritvik Prabhu, Sahar Farzanepour
article en

Abstract

Software developers commonly rely on platforms like Stack Overflow for problem-solving and learning. However, academic research is an untapped resource that could greatly benefit industry practitioners. The challenge lies in connecting the innovative insights from academia to real-world problems faced by developers. This project introduces ResearchBot, a tool designed to bridge this academia-industry gap. ResearchBot employs a modular approach, encompassing understanding questions, curating queries to obtain relevant papers in the CrossRef repository, summarizing paper content, and finally answering user questions based on paper summaries. The core objective of ResearchBot is to democratize access to academic knowledge for industry professionals. By providing concise summaries of cutting-edge research directly in response to SE-related questions, ResearchBot facilitates the application of academic insights to practical contexts. Ultimately, it aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry, using research evidence to support learning and decision-making in software development.

Virginia Tech (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 85%
Online Learning and Analytics
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