On the distinction between for-profit and non-profit

[Jan Velterop <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

In the discussion about the McAfee and Bergstrom data the issue of profit 
versus non-profit featured repeatedly. It is my impression that far more 
journals are for profit than is apparent in that dataset. There is nothing 
wrong with being for profit, of course, and many of the journals labelled 
'non-profit' aim to have a financial surplus. I call that a profit. Their 
owners/publishers may be not-for- profit, but that only means that they 
don't have to pay tax and that the surplus generated has, by law, to be 
spent in a certain way or ploughed back into the organisation. It doesn't 
mean that the journals work on a pure cost-recovery basis. Should we know 
which journals price their subscriptions on a pure cost-recovery basis, 
without profit or surplus, then we might have something to distinguish 
them in meaningful categories of this sort.

Jan Velterop