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A lot of software offer student or academic licenses that prohibit the use of the software for commercial purposes. A lot of scientific journals are edited by for-profit companies and publish papers for their own commercial purposes. Now my question is: If the software is used to - for example - create figures for a paper that will be published in a for-profit scientific journal, is this considered "commercial use"?

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Most student licenses I know up limit usage to educational purposes. Using software under such licenses for the purpose you describe would be research usage or professional usage, and would not be allowed under such licenses, "commercial" or not. This will vary by license, though. Some are VERY specific about limiting the use to coursework, and some are more generous.

"Academic" licenses are more nebulous. They're often pretty pricey, and are pretty much full-function licenses limited to "academic" use -- and the uses you describe are usually allowable.

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    While this is true, I've once just used a trial license of a software and asked a rep directly if I could use the produced work for a publication. The rep said it was okay (thus the company authorized that use) and kindly suggested I could post some code to their examples repository. So this could be a solution to OP's problem, while you've given the answer to what he/she asked.
    – Mefitico
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 2:10
  • I don't think the issue is that clear-cut, as research work is often done by graduate or post-graduate students as part of their studies.
    – ddkk
    Commented Aug 27, 2021 at 11:53
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    @ddkk, such work is often non allowable under some licenses designed for class support.
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Aug 27, 2021 at 12:50
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For an author writing a paper, the answer would be no. The author isn't exploiting the software for commercial use, but for scientific/academic work. The author that uses the software isn't selling anything, nor profiting from it monetarily.

However, if a traditional journal were to take the same software and use it to prepare figures for authors (or covers or whatever), then that would be commercial use. The journal is, itself, a commercial entity.

If the interpretation for authors were different than this, I fear the land would be covered knee deep in lawsuits. I'd guess that most people developing such software envision and support exactly this use, not just making pictures for your kiddies.

Note that the answer for books might be different, since publishing books is a commercial activity and the author will profit from it.

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    As a related side comment, I've heard about commercial software companies looking to see who publishes using their software and making sure the academic groups have research licenses, not just academic teaching licenses.
    – Richard Erickson
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 17:25
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    "If the interpretation for authors were different than this" -- that sort of the problem with "non-commercial" licenses: This is not a well-defined term. If you're in China and you get paid a bonus for publishing a paper, is this commercial? If you're an industrial researcher and you write research papers for your company not related to actual product development, is this commercial? Lawyers could argue for years over this because nobody ever defines what "non-commercial" precisely means.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Aug 20, 2021 at 23:21
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    @WolfgangBangerth : Everybody who issues licenses for software defines what they understand to be "non-commercial" in their license terms, as pretty much every contract starts with a set of definitions valid specifically for that contract. That of course if "non-commercial" is on the terms of the license, likewise to "academic" and "student". Lawyers only have what to discuss if the terms are poorly written, and no relevant company leaves obscure license terms for long in the wild. The problem is for the users, who often don't want to read each and every license agreement.
    – Mefitico
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 2:15

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