Key issues and trends in the water policy literature

Abstract

Content analysis of 2 complete years of articles published in the journal Water Policy show that a wide spread of issues dominate the policy analysis discourse, with citations of the articles being spread across the thematic issues published. Few articles in the journal were particularly technical in nature but rather the journal has tended to publish articles which are more directly linked to water policy. Articles related broadly to institutional and regulatory reform were numerically the most significant in terms of the published content of the journal. Examination of the short-term citation rate of articles published did not show a significant bias towards any thematic issue covered by the journal, suggesting broad interest in the wide range of topics relating to water policy issues.