Under the similar conditions, I would prefer a non-for-profit journal. I think making money out of scientific authors is a shame.

Can you give us an example of journal/s you are referring to? Most of the openaccess journals are non profit (PLOS, BMC etc) the charge is for processing and to cover their expenses. I prefer open access because i like to see every person access and appreciate my work.

I don't think it matters whether the journal is "For Profit" or "Not for profit" except the cost factor, Not for profit journals do not have to factor profit into their margin, and thus can run on smaller margins, keeping the cost of publishing down. Whether they can keep it as low as PEERJ claims to want to, or not is still an open question.

The problem becomes, how do you run a "For Profit" journal on a low enough profit margin to compete with "Not for profit" publishers directly, or how do you make your journal have some benefit that the scientists will want to pay more for. If you are just going to dump data to the network anyway, there will be no interest in the "For Profit" version. If you offer a superior editing system, and hand-hold the clients through the process of editing, people might be interested but it would have to be more than just a "Premium Service" on a free site.

My recommendation is a free-preprint service where the researcher can dump to internet, a free or inexpensive proof service where a "consultant" reads the paper, and offers advice on how to improve it, and only THEN, and subtly done, premium editing services to polish it. Another suggestion is paid reviewers to review the polished articles. The idea is that you have to give service for money, and you are fighting the perception that the whole publishing mechanism can be automated and should therefore be free.

Under the similar conditions, I would prefer a non-for-profit journal. I think making money out of scientific authors is a shame.

maybe you can check your national research organizations? e.g. the FWF in Austria pays the fees for making the research "open access" to some point. it even encourages the students and researchers to make their research as public as possible

I think there are two sides to this, the profit from others, and the service for a profit side.

Nobody blames the barista for coffee shops overpricing the brew, they are just thankful that they are not the ones having to pour steaming hot liquid first thing in the morning. If it is a valid service delivered well, people are willing for a profit to be made, why do they feel different about publishing? I think it is the perception of an excessive, one might say obscene profit, that is the problem. Spending 5 times the price of coffee to get your favorite customized blend with frozen yogurt in it, is not considered obscene but Elsevier, and Springer are seen to be making obscene profits from publishing scientific journals.

A more modest profit should be allowed if it, for instance brings with it, professional editing services presented in a useful manner without grasping for income.

I rather think in other way. These for profit open access journals have bloomed much. Whatever keywords u give in google, these articles come first. Most of them are not of good quality and some of them are not even having quality. The articles from years old good journals take the back seat in google search. Google scholar is not helping much. As usual NCBI it gives mismatched articles. This has created over the period of time that these less quality articles get citations

I think you have a point there Jayaprakashvel M, For Profit open access journals that do not offer a good service for the money, are a blight on publishing. But this is not what I am talking about. If you want to open a for-profit open access journal and you want to compete with the non-profit ones, you will have to up your game a bit, or you will be classed in the same class as the preditory ones that already exist.

For profit journal often publish whatever they receive. As Jayaprakashvel said, they often offer "zero quality articles". I think their motto could be "pay and publish (or perish)"