Every time I receive an invitation letter from the editor to review a manuscript, I asked myself this query. I would like to uncover this issue from other points of view.
1. That it is a duty comes first - none of us can repeatedly turn down a request to be one of the reviewers of a manuscript, as we need someone else reciprocating in kind - i.e., if we do not take on a refereeing duty, we cannot expect someone to take on the refereeing of our paper! It's clear as daylight. We need to play along and do it well, otherwise we may be targeted as a lazy bastard, and not be allowed to send a paper to those journals.
2. By performing these duties, not only the authors of the submitted papers learn something: you - as a reviewer gain something, like other ways of phrasing, structuring, and so on.
1. That it is a duty comes first - none of us can repeatedly turn down a request to be one of the reviewers of a manuscript, as we need someone else reciprocating in kind - i.e., if we do not take on a refereeing duty, we cannot expect someone to take on the refereeing of our paper! It's clear as daylight. We need to play along and do it well, otherwise we may be targeted as a lazy bastard, and not be allowed to send a paper to those journals.
2. By performing these duties, not only the authors of the submitted papers learn something: you - as a reviewer gain something, like other ways of phrasing, structuring, and so on.
Fully agree with Michael Patriksson.
With other words:
1. service to the community ... it's part of your job or better your profession ... helping others to improve
2. learning from others ... new ideas, new theories, new insights, even if it is 'only' the insight that you want to avoid to submit similarly premature papers
3. mid-term: if you want to pursue an academic career providing excellent reviews to a peer-reviewed journal could get you on the editorial review board and so forth.
However, this does not mean that you should accept any request especially if it is not in the field of your experience, if you are targeted rather randomly by one of the many 'new' open access journals, if you know that you do not have the time or willingness to provide a good, i.e. supportive review, ...
Many thanks for all of you, for your reply and enrichment of the answer. Really, I agree with all of your elaborations. I was in need to highlight the importance of this issue.
What Motivates People to Review Articles? The Case of the Human-Computer Interaction Community .....(https://faculty.washington.edu/garyhs/docs/nobarany-JAIST-Review.pdf )
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