Aims and scope
Aims and Scope
Journal of Water publishes peer-reviewed research on water as a physical, chemical, biological and social system — hydrology and watersheds, water quality and treatment, aquatic and estuarine ecosystems, water resources, infrastructure and management, and the terms on which water is supplied and used.
The remit
What the journal publishes
The journal takes water as its subject and follows it across the scales at which it is studied: the processes that move it through a landscape, the chemistry and biology it carries, the systems built to treat and deliver it, and the arrangements under which it is used. Work is welcome from experimental, field, modeling, analytical and methodological traditions.
The five areas below describe that remit. They are a guide to fit rather than a list of categories a manuscript must belong to: research that sits between them, or that brings two of them together, is within scope.
Hydrological processes and watersheds
Precipitation, runoff, infiltration and recharge; surface and groundwater flow; watershed and catchment behavior; hydrological modeling and simulation; the response of these processes to climatic and land-use change.
Water quality and aquatic systems
Physical, chemical and microbiological quality of natural, supplied and treated waters; contaminant sources, fate and transport; biogeochemical cycling; rivers, lakes, wetlands, estuarine and coastal systems and the organisms that live in them.
Treatment and supply
Drinking-water and wastewater treatment; process performance and design; distribution, storage and point-of-use supply; monitoring and analytical methods; reuse and residuals.
Water resources, infrastructure and management
Reservoirs, dams, irrigation and drainage; allocation and planning under scarcity, drought and flood; asset performance; the operation of the engineered systems that move and hold water.
Water, environment and society
Governance, institutions, economics and practice where the analysis rests on evidence about water systems: access and supply arrangements, risk to communities, and the use of water science in decisions.
Article types
Routine article types: Research Article; Review Article; Systematic Review and Meta-analysis; Methods Article; Data/Resource Article; Short Communication; Case Study.
Invitation-only formats: Editorial — invitation only; Perspective/Commentary — invitation only.
Judging fit
How a manuscript is assessed
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Scope is judged on the question the work addresses and the evidence it brings, not on the discipline the authors write from or the region the study covers. A single-site study, a modeling paper, a methods contribution and a synthesis are each assessed against the standards appropriate to their kind.
Published work and the remit
Articles already published show the remit in use. They illustrate the range of questions the journal has handled; the remit above is what the journal invites, and it is wider than any set of published examples.
Authors judging fit can read the current issue and the archive, or describe the work to the editorial office before submitting.
Where to send a manuscript
- Primary route ManuscriptZone
- Alternative route Simple manuscript submission form
- Assisted route Editorial email — [email protected]
Authors must use only one submission route for the same manuscript.