I'm on record as being concerned about the difficulties of basing questions and answers exclusively about published academic literature here on IPS.SE. The summary version is that I don't think that more focus on published research will improve IPS.SE question or answer quality very much, will cause a proliferation of questions we would otherwise close, and will lead to IPS becoming a less valuable resource overall. I still feel that way, and will try to describe my concerns further down in this post.
However, it also seems clear to me from discussions on this meta that there is a strong appetite for citations from these sorts of papers, and even some for answers which are nothing but indices of such papers. This site is what we make of it, so let's discuss!
I also have concerns about how well academic studies will fit here. They're not all equally important and they can (in some cases) be addressed, but they are obstacles that bear discussion. This is not an exhaustive list (I haven't even touched on observational vs. experimental studies, empirical vs. simulated, verisimilitude of the study and the real world, and lots of others), but it's long enough already. At least meta allows for a bit more back-and-forth discussion than the main site.
My major concerns:
1. Academic literature is a specific type of thing, intended for a specific environment, and we don't have that environment here.
The SE format is a poor one for discussion, but discussion is what scientific publications are about. A fish may swim in a freshwater lake and thrive there. Drop it on a dry sidewalk and it probably won't. Put it in a bowl with distilled water, and it probably won't. Put it into a saltwater tank, and it probably won't. I have a difficult time imagining anything we could do here that would replace this integral element of scientific publication.
2. Academic papers can be very difficult to read
There's plenty of variety, but academic papers tend to be dry and complex. The more an answer requires the asker to simply read the paper, the less valuable it is as an "answer" in the SE format. And the more difficult a paper is to read, the less likely people will be to actually read through it, making up/downvoting, suggestions for improvement, and selecting an answer to accept more difficult.
3. The context in which research is published is really, really important
There are lots of elements that can wildly impact how a study should be interpreted. We will have a hard time including that here, I think-- meta discussion of a study doesn't really fit well when that study is being used to support a specific answer to a specific question that is not about the study itself. I am concerned that this will lead to systematic overstatement of study conclusions, assuming that they are accurately described in the first place. People who have faith in science but do not participate with the literature much tend to over-emphasize the value of publication in terms of describing the true state of reality.
4. Research is an ongoing endeavor. SE questions and answers, in large part, are not
Papers are sometimes updated, improved, discredited, and more, and entire conceptualizations rise and fall. I do not believe that there will be much maintenance of answers here. Think of what you've heard about what types of cholesterols and fats are "best" to eat, and why, and which will kill you, and why, over the last 30 years. It's all over the place! Pulling individual studies (or even groups of studies) at a single moment in time to post here does not keep up with continuing research.
5. Posting papers here will suggest that papers are of similar quality
Some papers are simply better at discovering information than others. It might be due to budget limiting how big a study can be, or a lack of pre-registration meaning that a researcher p-hacked until they found a "publishable" result, and any number of others. The lack of discussion capability here means that these sorts of differences will be hard to display, leading to answers of varying quality that will all look roughly the same. It will also become impossible to assess answers (including for voting purposes) without reading each and every paper cited to determine their quality and the accuracy of the write-up.
6. A lot of current research is not available free of charge
Relying only on what's available at PubMed or arXiv isn't going to be enough to ensure that information is current for fields in which active research is taking place. Citing papers that are paywalled means that someone without a relevant subscription cannot view, let alone assess, the background for the answers in which those papers are cited. Relying on only freely available studies means that only a portion of the research conversation is going to be presented (which will vary in importance across fields of study).
7. These, and other, difficulties can make "back it up" harder
For a "back it up" statement based on an answerer's personal experience or analysis, they can describe it in the answer. For a "back it up" that is entirely based on published research, most of the relevant information is going to be in those papers and will be hard to put into the answer.