>It feels like the broader trend is for academics to move towards applied research, instead.
Funny enough it was the opposite in my niche, a few years ago I could not get any applied research published. The CS reviewers would write things like 'where's the novelty? there are no novel architectures here', the biology reviewers would write things like 'this is a neat tool but we have other solutions that work worse but are established', and the papers would die as preprints. Ah well, glad I'm out of that game.
I hear you. One of the worst things is trying to get a PL paper published. Getting past the mathematicians and theoreticians is almost impossible. The only thing they want to look at is proofs and formalisms. Heaven forbid you actually build a thing.
It's a constant in academia that people believe the trend is shifting away from their own field. Because why else wouldn't they be a super-successful top academic showered in prizes? They're just not the best in the world? Their work is amazing, if only others would see it! No, it's definitely the global context that hinders them!
Funny enough it was the opposite in my niche, a few years ago I could not get any applied research published. The CS reviewers would write things like 'where's the novelty? there are no novel architectures here', the biology reviewers would write things like 'this is a neat tool but we have other solutions that work worse but are established', and the papers would die as preprints. Ah well, glad I'm out of that game.