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

TL;DR

ResearchBot is a tool that connects academic research with software developers by providing summarized research papers in response to industry questions, facilitating practical application of academic insights.

Contribution

It introduces a modular system that curates, summarizes, and delivers academic research to industry practitioners, bridging the gap between academia and software development communities.

Findings

Provides concise summaries of research papers for developers.

Enhances access to academic knowledge for industry practitioners.

Supports practical decision-making with research evidence.

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.