Consider donating a prototype to an adjacent academic discipline and allowing them to generate hype for you by applying your product to their field.
What do I mean by this?
Forget the studies for your own field of application. You will need to do those yourself.
There are disciplines (e.g. psychophysics) which are crying out for new toys to play with. If your device fits the bill then give them one and ask them to try it out.
Academic papers are a form of currency.
[This article is a part of the Innovation Snippets series]