It's been just over a year since the war started against the parasitic monopoly of the science publishing world https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/AcademicPublicationsComplaintFinal.pdf It's going to be long and grueling to dismantle that system. I'm not particularly hopeful about the outcome of this case because it'll probably just result in anti-trust law enforcement where some bits and pieces of the parasite get broken up and sold off. The inherent problem of third parties gatekeeping information will remain largely intact and academics will remain largely at their mercy.

The V4V R&D model strikes me as just a different form of gofundme campaigns. Just not the same vision, time preference or scale for most fields of research.

If only I had $$ for lab equipment so I could just do research

Researchers are actually all over the new stuff all the time, but starting a project on it is very difficult because of all the bureaucracy and begging involved for funding