I often read SWE research that is just kind of common sense to somebody in industry. Of course, it's worth trying to take an empirical approach to quantify merits of certain techniques, but the vast majority of the research that's done does not seem that novel.
I'm fairly certain that you could probably write and publish a decent quality paper yourself. But why would you, when industry is so much more lucrative? There are many competent people in CS Academia, but their motivations tend to be quite different from the average engineer, and they don't have access to the same resources or expertise that tech giants or startups do (outside of internships and fellowships that are commonplace for visiting researchers who spend a season or two working at a lab)
