Stack Overflow is widely recognized by software practitioners as the go-to resource for addressing technical issues and sharing practical solutions. While it is not typically seen as a forum for scholarly discourse, users on Stack Overflow often refer to academic sources in their discussions. Yet, little is known about these referenced works from the academic community and how they intersect the needs and interests of the Stack Overflow community. To bridge this gap, we conducted a large-scale study on academic references in Stack Overflow. Our findings reveal that Stack Overflow communities with different domains of interest engage with academic literature at varying frequencies and speeds. The contradicting patterns suggest that some disciplines may have diverged in their interests and development trajectories from the corresponding practitioner community. Finally, we discuss the potential of Stack Overflow in gauging the real-world relevance of academic research.

翻译：Stack Overflow被软件从业者广泛视为解决技术问题和分享实用解决方案的首选资源。尽管其通常不被视为学术讨论的论坛，但用户在Stack Overflow的讨论中常会引用学术来源。然而，这些被引用的学术成果如何与Stack Overflow社区的需求和兴趣相交织，我们知之甚少。为弥合这一差距，我们对Stack Overflow中的学术引用进行了大规模研究。研究结果表明，不同兴趣领域的Stack Overflow社区在引用学术文献的频率和速度上存在差异。这些矛盾的模式表明，某些学科的发展轨迹和兴趣方向可能已与其对应的从业者社区产生分化。最后，我们讨论了Stack Overflow在衡量学术研究实际相关性方面的潜力。