The whole "we need latex because of math" thing has been nothing more than a bad excuse for a very long time. Math notation is too varied to include in Unicode (some papers have to invent new notation!), but even if we had it, authors would still insist on latex. You can already make responsive and largely accessible papers that render to HTML, with latex familiar syntax for equations, bibtex for references and all the footnotes/figures/tables/captions you might want.

But authors still refuse. It's not real science if the layout isn't two-column, written in an old serif font, tables and figures float randomly disconnected from their reference points, code isn't syntax higlighted and has completely nonsensical line breaks... If the reader wants to read it on a phone, or needs to change to font to be larger or more legible, they're not a real scientist and don't deserve to read real papers.

Seriously, what the fuck?? Even the economists are laughing at us with their MS Word and third-party cloud-based bibliography plugin subscription.