In India, there are concerns about the learning quality and the skill set of the graduates, as only 47% are estimated to be employable. It is a large and significant problem that needs to be researched and addressed by a community of Indian CS educators and researchers (CSEd). To foster such a community, we have been running a paper-reading activity for sixteen months. This paper reports on the experience of running such an open-group research discussion forum and investigates the impact on the CSEd research community-building process. Every month, this activity begins by selecting a paper based on specific criteria and inviting interested participants to an online discussion session. Major activities during the discussion are recorded for further analysis. To understand the impact of the activity better, we also conducted a survey of community members at the end of this period. The paper shows that the primary challenge is to get unique community members to join the session; a participant who stayed for a few minutes attended the entire session. We find that the factors for keeping the discussion engaging while promoting active participation included starting the discussion with a paper briefing, the presence of domain experts, and having the paper’s author present during the discussion. The survey respondents mostly agreed that the activity is important and should be continued. They also provided useful suggestions to make the sessions more effective for the participants, including making it easy for those who didn’t read the paper before joining.