how many times would you...

[peer review request overload]

Hello!
I think agreeing to do peer reviews is a part of our professional obligation and I have never turned down an invitation except for conflict of interest reasons. Yet now I am stuck in deciding whether or not to accept an invitation to review for a journal that I just reviewed for a few months ago. Time is thin right now (end of semester, ASA submission deadlines coming up, etc). What would you do? And more generally, is this usual? I always thought the loose rule was that one could anticipate being asked to review for a journal once a year.

[Ha ha]

That's not much of an overload you are talking about. I get several requests a week. I accept roughly a third. There is shame in turning an invite down. Journals anticipate this, that's why they send out too many of them.

[overload cont.]

oh, i meant feeling overloaded because the same journal asked for me to do a review 6 weeks ago, and another request for the same journal just came in within the last few days. is that typical?

[eh]

Just send a nice no and say you're keen to review the next one. They'll understand.

[runner]

i'd decide based on my interest in the paper/qualifications for reviewing it. it's not the journal's fault if they randomly got 2 papers in your field very close together. maybe they won't ask again for a year.

and the metric i use is 3:1 - i review 3 papers for every 1 i send out.

[thanks!]

This is great insight. Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts!