Lately I've been saying yes to a lot of additional work because I wanted to increase my total number of publications for my tenure dossier submission. This included writing a commentary on a paper that I reviewed, as well as writing two invited review articles. Invited articles are usually peer-reviewed, but much less stringently than research articles, and they are almost always accepted ultimately. However, these types of articles are inevitably a lot more work than I initially imagine, and they take away from effort spent on actual research. So I've started thinking about advice for whether or not to accept these offers.
1. If it's in a good journal, then yes. By good, I mean impact factor 6 or greater. Don't waste time writing for a journal you've never heard of, or if it doesn't have an impact factor or isn't on Pubmed. I get multiple requests from predatory journals like this almost every day and just ignore them.
2. If the person inviting the submission is an actual working scientist in your field, and the invitation is personalized, then I would suggest saying yes as long as it's for a journal you've at least heard of. On the other hand, if it is a form letter telling you about a special themed journal issue, or if it's from an editorial assistant, this is not a "real" invitation and so I would generally ignore those. An email reply declining is usually not required.
3. If I have a new student or postdoc who could benefit from a quick first author publication for improving their chances at a fellowship grant, then the answer is almost always yes as long as it's a legitimate journal that's on Pubmed.
4. If the proposed topic is not something that you care about or that you have the reputation/expertise to write about credibly, then say no. The exception to this would be if it's in a really great journal. Last year I wrote a review article for a journal that actually has the highest impact factor of any journal I've ever published in. However, I was an expert in only one small aspect of the very broad topic. This made writing the review an enormous amount of work. However, I think I would do it again because I learned a lot and now have a publication in that very prestigious journal.
5. The more options the invitation provides, the better, and the more likely I would be to say yes. Does it limit how many coauthors you can have? Does it leave the topic up to you? Does it allow either a short or a long format? Do they let you choose your own deadline?
6. All of this is of course dependent on whether you actually have time to devote to a writing project that will probably not be seen as a real peer reviewed research article for promotion and tenure. On the other hand, increasing your total publication numbers is always good, and invited articles demonstrate that you have a reputation for expertise in your field. But, I would always prioritize lab research productivity over writing reviews.
