I founded and led an unofficial research paper reading group in Nexon. I thought it is important to maintain a certain level of academic sharpness, even though I'm currently at a distance from the academia. Although it might be difficult to find immediate applications of those research papers, knowing such ideas exist makes a huge difference.
I realized it is a tremendous challenge to motivate and persuade people to do something without having any authority over them. People get busy with their daily lives and they easily lose interest for things they don't have to do. However, if I could get them on the same page with the rationale (i.e., why we need to read research papers) they tend to retain a certain level of activeness.
These are some papers that my team members and myself have read: