Just today I received another request to review an article! Saying No isn’t all that difficult but I don’t want to be pissing off hundreds of journal editors each year.
In the discussion following my recent outburst, Philip Schrodt came up with some suggestions along the lines of reducing the number of articles that researchers are expected to produce. Schrodt’s ideas are fine but I don’t think they will resolve my problem, at least not right away. Even if the number of submissions is reduced by a factor of 4, I’m still getting a ton of papers that people ask me to review.
That said, I do like the idea of never again submitting to a refereed journal.