> but their output in paper form is basically unusable
Others have commented as well but I will reinforce: their output is basically unusable for you for the purpose you want to put it to.
Which is fair, but you should also recognize that you are not the audience of the papers and for good or for ill the system is not set up to help you with this.
I don't see how the system is very good for its intended audience either. If papers about making sound with code actually included sound and code, people in academia would be better off too. It would make it easier to search through literature, and to build on each other's work.
Papers are a conversation as much as anything else.
I agree that these days the tooling makes it much easier to distribute code & data somehow to match up, but there is also a cost/incentive mismatch. Basically to do a decent release of what you are working on and worse, potentially support it, costs time but has no real career value (yet). Which means it's mostly only done by people who are philosophically convinced of its value.
I think this will change over time, at least in some areas, but it won't be quick.
Others have commented as well but I will reinforce: their output is basically unusable for you for the purpose you want to put it to.
Which is fair, but you should also recognize that you are not the audience of the papers and for good or for ill the system is not set up to help you with this.