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Suppose youwish to publish a periodical or magazine like TIME, ECONOMISTS, or NEW YORKER.You must setup an office, hire an editorial staff, pay and fund the work of various writers/authors for their  effort and expense, and finally establish a distribution network  and subscription list. These task are expensive and do not easily yield profits. On the other hand, publishing scientific journals face very different situations. The editors typically serve free (certainly in the ten years I was editor-in-chief of a professionally journal,  the thought of getting paid never entered my mind). So do the referees/reviewers. The works of the authors are invariably funded by the government  or society. Materials for publication are never a problem since “publish or perish” is the mantra  of every research profession. Finally, subscriptions  by libraries and individuals are often automatic and again directly  or indirectly paid for by the government. Thus, there are little  distribution/subscription expenses. As to office expense, an established publisher such as Elsevier can piggy back a scientific journal on already existing office/logistic setup  and only incurring marginal costs. Consequently, publishing scientific  periodicals can be a very profitable venture for a commercial  publishing house. The post WWII booms in scientific and technological  research thus fueled an exponential increase in scientific journal publication by commercial organizations.

This development is excellently chronicled in term of history and factual data in a long article  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science?CMP=share_btn_link . It also raises the uncomfortable question of confluence/conflict of interest and debasing of the scientific standard. I thank Professor Guanrong Chen of City U of HK for bringing  this to my attention.