This is a great question. Sorry in advance I don't know of one. But it is something I think about often. I tend to read math and economics research papers (have PhD in the latter too if it matters) and have published.
I think there are 3 issues here:
1) there is so much research coming out. Even working paper releases. Its hard to keep up with that volume of work. How to control that flow of work?
2) Research has become very niche. So there are research papers that only 5 people can understand and only 2 of those people even care about. This specificity "problem" is a reality of the sciences but it makes HN type voting system a challenge. An upvoting system is OK for news articles and technical papers that had a wide audience in mind, but for many research papers it can skew the results people see to particular types of "easy" research which are not always very good or rigorous or current.
3) This is the big one I think: We really need a go-to site for anonymous comments on research papers in academia and from other experts working in industry. HN is a great example of the power of such an "anonymous experts option" which I think overall works well here. Sure there are the occasional "troll" comments or the "I googled this topic I never of 5 minutes ago then commented" type comments but in general quality anonymous comments do rise to the top very often on here and I learn more from comments than articles in many cases. I think with research papers, while people are not afraid to attack or be polemical per se, but they do hold back on a lot more they want to say if not anonymous. It's very easy to be a critic in public, but offering an alternative solutions or idea in public can cause problems career-wise and for other reasons.
P.S. As for tricks, I think the usual google advanced search tricks and other boolean gimmicks work quite well (date ranges, "-" to exclude shit, wildcards).