Working in academia is not just navigating university politics. It is also about conducting research and teaching one's field to students.
Academia already has an explicit policy of accepting questions on "university pedagogy". This covers the teaching part of a university employee's life.
But research is as least as important as teaching. (In fact I know many academics who are willing to do research without teaching, and none who would like to do teaching without research, so maybe it is even considered more important by academics?). So people in academia need to know how research is done.
And I don't mean the nitty gritty stuff of choosing a varimax or quartimax rotation for the factor analysis in a given experiment. This can be asked on stats.stackexchange.
But generations of researchers have created a body of theory of science and philosophy of science. Starting with epistemological vs. ontological definitions of knowledge, and going into different theoretical perspectives and methodologies. This is a topic which is field-independent; every scientist's work is touched by it, no matter whether she is in psychology, molecular biology or material science.
Doing research without this kind of knowledge is like hacking circuits without knowing Ohm's law. I know it, because I've tried doing research that way for the last four years and wondered why I am in a downward spiral of doing something, getting feedback from my supervisor or from reviwers that it is not the right thing, then trying to correct it (less motivated this time), and still not getting it right. Graduate students need to know it, else they do the wrong things. Professors need to know it, so they can explain to their grad students why the wrong thing they are doing is wrong, and how to find the thing which is right.
There is need for this knowledge within academia. The everyday worklife of people within academia is affected by it. Academics are also currently the only people who have that knowledge. The theorists of science are scientists themselves. The professors who guide us, who define daily what good science is by deciding which article to publish and which to reject, by applying for grants for projects which are compliant with scientific principles, by evaluating their grad students' work, they all have an understanding of what proper research looks like, whether on an explicit or on an intuitive level. Experienced academics are the experts on this type of knowledge, and unexperienced ones are very much in need of it, in order to become better academics.
I think that this situation perfectly reflects the spirit of StackExchange as a place where the experts in one topic answer the questions of the people starting out in their area, in order to make this type of knowledge available to everyone who struggles with becoming better in what he or she is doing.
Therefore, I think this should be part of the on-topic areas for Academia.Stackexchange. It is the right place for it, and the community can only gain from allowing it.
This post was prompted by the fact that I asked a question on this topic and got several reactions from community members who found it off-topic. I don't know why they think so. Butif it is just because "this is not the kind of question we are accustomed to seeing around", then this shouldn't be a barrier. Just because nobody before has thought of asking this kind of question doesn't mean it isn't interesting for the people who ask it and the ones who answer. (And several people expressed interest too).
I would also like to note that they couldn't think of a site which is better suited, and I think I made it clear in my argument above why this is the community to which it is suited, and not any other.
It is up to the community to decide whether it wants to accept or reject this type of question. I would find it very sad if it decides to reject it, because this site would be its natural home, just like in real life, the university is the home of scientific theory.