OSA (Optical Society of America, now The Optical Society) has a ton of articles related to photographic emulsions as well, going back to at least the 1930s. Obviously, I wouldn't expect the same width and depth of research compared to the proprietary stuff generated by Kodak Research Lab, but I'd expect to see some interesting nuggets in the mix. Some of the author names would be familiar (like the Gold Sensitization of Photographic Emulsion write-up by F.W.H. Mueller). Most deal with applications which use emulsions, but a keyword search revealed a few that deal with improving emulsion sensitivity for certain applications (such as holography starting in the 1960s).
Also reminded me that I need to renew my OSA / SPIE memberships.