As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in PDF format (LaTeX source files will only be required upon acceptance).
The submission is blinded; author details appear only on the title page, submitted as a separate file.
Author Guidelines
Scope The Journal of Water Economics publishes theoretical and empirical research on the economics of water resources. We welcome contributions on allocation, governance, pricing, regulation, policy instruments, valuation, and related topics at the interface of economics and water management. Papers should advance economic understanding of water resources and be relevant for policy or management. Submissions based on case studies should make clear how their findings yield insights that extend beyond the specific case. Submissions drawing on methods from outside economics should explicitly connect their approach to economic analysis.
Topics of interest include the economics of water use across agriculture, energy, industry, aquaculture, and urban supply; the design and evaluation of water policy instruments such as markets, tariffs, and payments for ecosystem services; and valuation studies of aquatic ecosystems and ecosystem services. We also encourage work on pressing challenges such as floods, droughts, water scarcity, pollution, water quality, and health risks, as well as research on restoration, conservation, climate adaptation, and transboundary river management.
Originality Submissions must not have been published or be under consideration at another journal.
Blinding Submissions should be prepared in blinded form. Author names, affiliations, and acknowledgments should be omitted from the main PDF.
Title page A separate title page with author details should be uploaded at submission. In addition to title, authors, affiliation, and any acknowledgments, the title page should include: (1) a declaration of competing interests, (b) any funding sources, and (c) a statement on data and code availability, if relevant. Authors are encouraged to share data and code supporting their results, unless restricted by confidentiality or legal limitations. The latter should be indicated in the cover letter upon submission.
Supplementary materials Submissions reporting survey or experimental research (including, for example, lab-in-the-field studies, online experiments, or stated-preference surveys) must include all relevant materials at the time of initial submission. These materials may include experimental instructions, questionnaires, screening surveys, recruitment protocols, or coding manuals. Such materials can be included as an appendix in the main manuscript. If they are only needed to facilitate review, they may instead be uploaded as supplementary files.
Submission format Submissions must be uploaded in PDF format, with no specific requirements on layout, style, or length at submission. LaTeX source files will only be required after acceptance. To keep the journal open access and free, accepted papers must use the designated LaTeX template, which minimizes copy-editing and production costs.
LaTeX template The LaTeX template is used to prepare the final version of accepted papers. It is not mandatory to use the template for draft submissions. The template can be accessed by downloading the ZIP archive, which contains four files.
sample.tex: The main LaTeX file for preparing the manuscript; use the submit mode as indicated in the file.
jwe.cls: The LaTeX class file defining the journal’s layout and style; place it in the same directory as the LaTeX file (do not modify it).
To use the template, extract the ZIP archive and ensure that all files are in the same directory. Follow the instructions in sample.tex and compile using a local LaTeX compiler (e.g. TeXworks or MiKTeX) or an online editor such as Overleaf to produce the PDF.
Accepted papers Upon acceptance, authors must provide all source files (LaTeX source file, figures, bibliography, any supplementary files). This version must be prepared using the Journal of Water Economics LaTeX template.
Copyright Notice
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. The article will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits anyone to share and adapt the work for any purpose, provided proper attribution is given to the authors and the journal. Authors are encouraged to share and distribute their work (e.g. in institutional repositories, on personal websites, or academic networks) with proper citation, as this can lead to productive exchanges and greater impact. The journal does not charge any publication fees.
