Yeah, from discussing this with friends in academia it seems like this is the biggest hurdle at the moment. Someone on Reddit reached out to arXiv [0] and their response was very negative towards it, which seems unfortunate:
> At this point, we’re more likely to add support for .docx than a markdown language.
I've seen that too, yeah. It's unfortunate, but also completely reasonable; docx is actually surprisingly common outside of physics, maths, and CS, and it is almost surprising that it's not supported since OOXML an open format now.
> At this point, we’re more likely to add support for .docx than a markdown language.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/typst/comments/1ddlgvg/arxiv_just_a...