SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation

Papers in the tracked journals on UN Sustainable Development Goal 6, Clean water and sanitation. OpenAlex assigns a paper to each UN Sustainable Development Goal that its classifier scores above 0.4 from the paper's text; a paper can belong to several goals or to none. Also as Markdown.

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Key findings#

From 2017 to 2026 (so far), SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation) was addressed by 1,905 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (1,127), AI (358) and operations research (260).
It is #16 of the 17 goals by papers from 2023 to 2025 (658).
230 of them were published in 2025, against 150 in 2017.
Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Beijing University of Technology (25), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (16) and Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (15).
The journals publishing most of them were Utilities Policy (139), Expert Systems with Applications (112) and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (44).
The most-cited of them is “The consequences of spatially differentiated water pollution regulation in China” (Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2018), with 1,162 citations.

Papers per year#

20172026 (so far)

Papers per publication year and category
Category	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026 (so far)
Economics	103	110	103	121	121	110	120	107	112	120
AI	17	13	11	17	34	48	46	52	67	53
Operations Research	14	14	16	32	22	32	36	33	30	31
Management	3	2	2	3	9	7	12	5	5	4
Statistics	4	1	2	2	1	7	2	2	4	3
Tourism and Hospitality	4	4	2	5	2	4	0	1	4	1
Finance	1	2	0	2	1	2	2	5	5	2
Health Economics and Policy	3	2	2	2	1	2	0	1	1	1
Information Systems	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	2	0	1
Marketing	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	1
Higher Education and Research	0	0	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0
Accounting	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	1
All categories	150	148	139	187	192	213	220	208	230	218

Where the papers come from#

Journals with the most papers, since 2023
#	Journal	Papers
1	Utilities Policy	139
2	Expert Systems with Applications	112
3	Journal of Environmental Economics and Management	44
4	Ecological Economics	44
5	World Development	38
6	Neural Computing and Applications	38
7	Socio-Economic Planning Sciences	27
8	Environmental and Resource Economics	26
9	Computers & Industrial Engineering	24
10	Journal of Development Economics	17

Institutions with the most papers, since 2023
#	Institution	Papers
1	Beijing University of Technology	25
2	Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique	16
3	Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement	15
4	Hohai University	12
5	Instituto Superior Técnico	12
6	Peking University	12
7	University of Lisbon	12
8	World Bank	12
9	Chinese Academy of Sciences	11
10	University of Pisa	10

Countries with the most papers, since 2023
#	Country	Papers
1	China	239
2	United States	186
3	United Kingdom	58
4	Italy	58
5	India	56
6	France	44
7	Spain	43
8	Brazil	38
9	Australia	30
10	Iran	30

Keywords with the most papers, since 2023
#	Keyword	Papers
1	water scarcity	56
2	water utilities	51
3	China	49
4	water pollution	39
5	water resources management	38
6	household water use	27
7	water governance	27
8	water conservation	25
9	environmental regulation	24
10	water distribution systems	23

Most-cited papers#

Most-cited papers since 2017
#	Citations	Per month	Title	Journal	Published	Authors
1	1,162	11.1	The consequences of spatially differentiated water pollution regulation in China	Journal of Environmental Economics and Management	2018-02-01	Zhao Chen, Matthew E. Kahn, Yu Liu et al.
2	320	2.7	Water Governance—An Historical Perspective on Current Debates	World Development	2017-01-05	Philip Woodhouse, Mike Müller
3	292	5.6	Using artificial intelligence and data fusion for environmental monitoring: A review and future perspectives	Information Fusion	2022-06-25	Yassine Himeur, Bhagawat Rimal, Abhishek Tiwary et al.
4	291	3.0	Environmental regulation, emissions and productivity: Evidence from Chinese COD-emitting manufacturers	Journal of Environmental Economics and Management	2018-08-29	Chunhua Wang, Junjie Wu, Bing Zhang
5	290	2.6	Are we in deep water? Water scarcity and its limits to economic growth	Ecological Economics	2017-06-28	Tiziano Distefano, Scott Kelly
6	250	2.4	Sustainable planning of the energy-water-food nexus using decision making tools	Energy Policy	2017-12-21	Niclas Bieber, Jen Ho Ker, Xiaonan Wang et al.
7	246	4.3	Does public participation promote environmental efficiency? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment of environmental information disclosure in China	Energy Economics	2022-02-08	Hua Zhang, Tiantian Xu, Chao Qing Feng
8	234	2.6	Reconciling global aspirations and local realities: Challenges facing the Sustainable Development Goals for water and sanitation	World Development	2019-03-12	Veronica Herrera
9	234	2.6	Evaluating public participation impact on environmental protection and ecological efficiency in China: Evidence from PITI disclosure	China Economic Review	2019-03-27	Zhengge Tu, Tianyang Hu, Renjun Shen
10	224	2.6	Review of drivers and barriers of water and sanitation policies for urban informal settlements in low-income and middle-income countries	Utilities Policy	2019-08-27	Sheela Selin Sinharoy, Rachel E. Pittluck, Thomas Clasen

Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/6-clean-water-and-sanitation

@misc{scholar4ai-sdgs-6-clean-water-and-sanitation,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/sdgs/6-clean-water-and-sanitation}},
  urldate = {2026-10-31},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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