A decade after its establishment, APASTI has emerged as a key regional mechanism for promoting science, technology and innovation as drivers of sustainable development, resilience, and shared prosperity in Southeast Asia. This editorial highlights the contributions of APASTI to policy alignment, knowledge exchange, research visibility, and collaborative network-building across ASEAN, while also acknowledging ongoing constraints related to governance, capacity, funding disparities, and uneven regional integration. It introduces a special issue of 14 papers published in AJSTD that collectively evaluate the implementation and impact of APASTI across diverse sectors, including geohazards, energy, materials, health, infrastructure, transport, and information systems. By positioning these papers within the broader agenda of inclusive and open scientific publishing, the editorial argues that accessible regional scholarship is essential for informing the next generation of STI policy and cooperation in ASEAN. Although APASTI has established an important base for regional transformation, its long-term success will depend on sustained collaboration, adaptive governance, and continued investment in equitable scientific capacity across member states.
Basilios Tsikouras (Thu,) studied this question.