Oh hell yeah!
It can be hard to sift through the all the random papers on Arxiv or something, but I do try my best to keep up with current research. Obviously I don't have the time or ability to read every single paper (much as I wish I could!), but I do try and at least read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion to CS papers that are relevant to me, though the "relevant to me" part can be hard to figure out a lot of the time.
Having an "HN-like" experience for research papers could really help with that, I love the idea!
Out of curiosity, what did you build this in? Since I do think this has potential to get to HN-levels of success in the academic world, have you thought about scaling?