The point is that taxes pay for people produce the content, and to allow people to read the content. If the publication of the content were also a public service, then no-one would be syphoning off profit in the middle. All of the money taken by that service from the consumers would be rolled back into saving taxpayer money at some stage in the process.
Suppose a park contracts with a company to provide food, and that company makes a profit; is that bad?
We could also consider workers "making a profit" from their labor, and decree that government workers must make only as much money as the minimum to feed themselves; any more would be "syphoning off profit".
I just don't see how you can make a principled distinction that says publishing margins of 30% are bad, but allows for subcontracting to private companies.
Part of the core business of universities is the production of research artefacts. Why shouldn't that core business also include making those artefacts available to others? Why not a subsidiary owned by a consortium of universities? Why not an organisation like EPSRC or AHRC, or even a national pan-discipline service provider?
Profit is what's left after the expenses have been taken care of. Salaries are an expense. Workers earning a salary are not making a profit, they are being remunerated for their labour.
Subcontracting to private companies is a good thing when your need for their services is subject to surge, or when your need for their services is so low that the overheads of DIY are prohibitive (Don't set up a whole in-house printing and binding facility just to do your glossy annual report, don't hire a full-time cleaner to keep your 5-desk office clean). If you are paying another company to provide a full-time, predictable service that is strongly aligned with your core business, then that is wasteful.
[0]http://phys.org/news/2015-06-companies-academic-publishing.h... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...
Then solve that by creating a new non profit that charges costs, or remove barriers to entering the business, and so on.
Complaining about the profit margins of a business while ignoring the reasons their profit margins are high (it's almost always because of barriers to entry) isn't useful.
>Why shouldn't that core business also include making those artefacts available to others? Why not a subsidiary owned by a consortium of universities?
That's a good idea, and I'd be all for it if they can do it. But while there isn't such a thing, complaining about high profits by companies providing a service is pointless, except to the extent you have an alternative or are pushing for one to be implemented.
What's actually ludicrous is that you pay private, profit making companies to allow you to read taxpayer-funded research.
Moreover, taxpayer-funded bodies have to pay these companies to allow them to read taxpayer-funded research from other taxpayer-funded bodies. That is the epitome of private sector wastefulness spreading its tentacles into the public sector.