IWA Publishing is the publishing company of the International Water Association (IWA), the global professional network for water professionals. The IWA itself was created on 7 September 1999 through the merger of the International Water Supply Association (founded 1947) and the International Association on Water Quality (founded 1962); IWA Publishing was established the same year and operates from London as a wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary.

The list is small and deliberately specialised: around 15 peer-reviewed journals covering drinking water, wastewater treatment, water quality, hydroinformatics, hydrology, WASH and water governance, alongside a books programme of several hundred titles including the Scientific and Technical Report series. Water Research, often associated with the IWA, is published by Elsevier in collaboration with the Association rather than by IWA Publishing - so its submission system and APC are Elsevier's, not IWA's. This guide covers the IWA-published titles: how to pick one, what open access costs, how review works, and how to submit.

IWA's titles overlap less than their names suggest. Scope is the main selector, and getting it right saves a desk rejection.

The portfolio splits into three groups. General and technical titles - Water Science and Technology, Water Practice and Technology, Water Supply, AQUA - carry the bulk of the engineering literature. Specialist titles - Journal of Water and Health, Journal of Hydroinformatics, Hydrology Research, Journal of Water and Climate Change, Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, Water Quality Research Journal - serve defined research communities. Newer open-access titles - H2Open Journal, Water Reuse, Blue-Green Systems - were launched or relaunched from 2019 onward as fully Gold OA venues.

Alongside journals, IWA Publishing runs an extensive books list of manuals of best practice, scientific and technical reports, and reference works aimed at both researchers and practising utility engineers. Many are available open access through the IWA Publishing Open Access ebook collection.

IWA Publishing offers four routes to open access:

• Subscribe to Open (S2O) - IWA's distinctive model. Participating journals are made fully open access for a given year if enough institutions renew their subscriptions; when the threshold is met, authors pay no APC at all. Roughly ten IWA titles operate on this basis, and whether a given volume year opens depends on subscription renewals, so check the journal's S2O status before you plan a budget.
• Gold open access - the fully-OA titles (H2Open Journal, Water Reuse, Blue-Green Systems and others) charge an APC on acceptance and publish under CC BY.
• Hybrid / optional OA - subscription titles allow an individual article to be made open on payment of an APC.
• Green open access - self-archiving of the accepted manuscript is permitted; the embargo depends on the title, so check the journal's policy page.

APCs below are 2026 list prices from IWA Publishing's per-journal fee pages, quoted before tax. Corresponding authors who are IWA individual members receive a 25% discount on the APC.

Under the Open Access Equity Policy, corresponding authors based in Research4Life A-list countries pay nothing, and those in B-list countries receive a 50% waiver. Institutional Read & Publish and S2O agreements - including deals via CAUL in Australia, VIVA in the United States, Jisc in the UK and EIFL - can also cover the fee entirely, so ask your library before paying personally.

IWA Publishing uses single-anonymised peer review: reviewers see author names, authors do not see reviewer names. Manuscripts sent out for review are assessed by at least two independent reviewers, with the handling editor making the recommendation. Time to first decision commonly runs around six to ten weeks, though it varies by title and by how quickly reviewers can be secured in a small specialist field.

IWA Publishing is a member of COPE and OASPA, and follows COPE flowcharts for allegations of misconduct, authorship disputes, and corrections or retractions.

1. Choose the journal. Read the aims and scope carefully - scope mismatch is the most common reason for desk rejection across the IWA list.
2. Read the Instructions for Authors. IWA maintains portfolio-wide instructions plus title-specific requirements on each journal's site.
3. Prepare the manuscript. Use an IWA-formatted Word or LaTeX template from SciSpace, with the IWA numbered reference style. Include an author-contributions statement, a data-availability statement, and any funding and conflict-of-interest declarations.
4. Submit through ScholarOne Manuscripts. Each journal links to its own ScholarOne site from the journal homepage; you will need a ScholarOne account and your ORCID.
5. Handle revisions and OA choice. If accepted, you select your open-access route and any applicable waiver or institutional agreement at that point.

Authors are expected to meet standard authorship criteria, disclose the use of generative AI tools, avoid duplicate submission, and register clinical or field trials where relevant. IWA Publishing requires data-availability statements and encourages deposit of underlying datasets in a recognised repository. Corrections and retractions are issued in line with COPE guidance, with a retraction notice permanently linked to the original article.