Journal of Korea Water Resources Association

About Journal of Korea Water Resources Association

Journal of Korea Water Resources Association — Journal Profile

The Journal of Korea Water Resources Association (한국수자원학회논문집 in Korean, abbreviated J. Korea Water Resour. Assoc.) is the flagship scholarly journal of the Korea Water Resources Association, South Korea's principal professional society for water science and engineering. It has been published since 1968 and appears monthly, which makes it one of the longest-running specialist water journals in Asia. Its current print ISSN is 2799-8746 and its electronic ISSN is 2799-8754, the pair carried by this JournalsWorld record and confirmed on the journal's Korea Science journal page, the national scholarly platform operated for Korean learned societies. Articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.3741/JKWRA, a fingerprint readers can use to confirm that a citation really belongs to this journal and not to one of the many other water-resources titles published around the world.

The journal is interdisciplinary by design. Its stated home ground is the science of water resources in the full sense: hydrology and hydraulics, river and dam engineering, flood and drought analysis, groundwater, water quality, and the planning and policy questions that decide how a country shares, stores and protects its water. Korea is a demanding laboratory for all of these subjects. Most of the peninsula's rain falls in a short summer monsoon season, its rivers are steep and flashy, and a dense population depends on a small number of large multipurpose dams and heavily managed river systems. A journal founded in 1968 has therefore grown up alongside the entire modern history of Korean water management, from the dam-building decades through the integrated water management reforms of recent years, and its archive reads as a running technical record of that national project.

History and identity

The Korea Science record for the journal states the essentials plainly: the Journal of Korea Water Resources Association is an interdisciplinary journal, launched in 1968 and published monthly by the Korea Water Resources Association. The volume numbering visible in the archive confirms the arithmetic of that founding date. Volume 48 appeared in 2015, volume 53 in 2020, volume 57 in 2024 and volume 58 in 2025, a sequence that counts back exactly to a first volume in 1968. Few society journals in the water field can show an unbroken monthly run of that length, and the continuity matters for researchers: a method, a gauging record or a design debate can often be traced through this journal's pages across several decades of Korean practice.

The ISSN pair on this record is younger than the journal itself. The numbers 2799-8746 and 2799-8754 belong to the journal's current registration, and the coverage window of 2019 onward that appears in this directory's stored data, and in the Scopus coverage history reported by SCImago (2019–2024), reflects that current-registration period rather than the journal's true age. Authors and librarians should therefore not be confused when older volumes surface under earlier registrations or when a database describes the journal as beginning in 2019: the periodical itself, its Korean title and its publishing society have been continuous since 1968. The safest way to identify the journal in any catalogue is the combination of the English title, the Korean title 한국수자원학회논문집, the publishing society and, for current material, the ISSN pair above.

The journal publishes in both Korean and English. Much of its archive is Korean-language research with English abstracts, which is how the journal serves its first constituency of Korean engineers, agency scientists and graduate students; but it also carries full English-language papers, including work from international authors on water problems outside Korea. A 2022 paper on groundwater quality zoning in Iranian aquifers, published in English in volume 55, is a typical example of that outward-facing side of the journal. For readers outside Korea, the English abstracts on Korea Science make the Korean-language archive searchable and citable even where the full text requires translation.

Scope and subjects

The journal's own aim and scope statement, as carried on Korea Science, describes a journal devoted to original scientific and technical papers, reviews, short communications and discussions in the science of water resources. It aims to provide a platform for research and engineering applications related to water resources, hydrologic and hydraulic problems, and its scope covers the development of new experimental, numerical, theoretical and analytical approaches in water resources. That breadth is visible in any recent issue. A single monthly number can move from a laboratory hydraulics experiment on weir discharge, through a distributed rainfall–runoff modelling study, to a policy analysis of integrated water management, without leaving the journal's territory.

Recurring subject areas, drawn from the journal's published archive, include the following. Hydrology and water resources systems: rainfall–runoff modelling, discharge estimation at ungauged catchments, reservoir and weir operation, and water demand forecasting. Flood science: design flood estimation, urban flooding and flood forecasting and warning systems. Drought: outlook methods such as ensemble streamflow prediction, drought indices and seasonal forecasting skill. Hydraulics and measurement: open-channel flow experiments, weir and spillway hydraulics, and instrument science such as acoustic Doppler current profiler discharge measurement. Groundwater and water quality: surface water–groundwater interaction, pumping impacts on streamflow, water quality zoning and monitoring platforms. And water policy and management: integrated water resources management, national water planning, and the institutional design of Korean water governance. Climate change runs through all of these as a standing theme, because Korea's water planning now has to price in shifting monsoon behaviour and more intense short-duration rainfall.

The mix of article types is a practical strength. Alongside full research papers, the journal publishes reviews that consolidate a fast-moving topic, short communications that put a method or dataset into circulation quickly, and discussions that let practitioners answer published work in print. Special and supplementary issues appear from time to time — volume 56 in 2023, for example, carried a supplementary issue — usually gathering papers around a conference theme or a national research programme. For an author deciding where to send a manuscript, the test the journal itself states is contribution: work should add something original to water science or to water engineering practice, and it should be presented so that the Korean and international water community can use it.

Publisher, editors and editorial practice

The publisher is the Korea Water Resources Association, the learned and professional society whose name the journal carries. This directory's stored record showed only a numeric publisher code (7378); the verified publisher is the Association itself, as stated on Korea Science and in the journal's own article pages. Society publishing shapes the journal's character: it is written substantially by the community it serves, its editorial standards are set inside that community, and its pages function partly as the profession's shared notebook, where agency practice, university research and consulting engineering meet.

All submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed, as the journal's scope statement confirms, with reviewers chosen for the originality and contribution of the work under assessment. The current editor-in-chief's name and the journal's article processing charges could not be verified from the sources consulted for this profile, and readers who need those details should take them from the journal's own submission portal rather than from any directory listing. That caution is deliberate: editorial offices change, and a directory profile that guesses at names or fees would mislead the very authors it is meant to help.

Submission runs through the journal's online system at submission.jkwra.or.kr, linked from its Korea Science page. Authors should prepare manuscripts to the journal's current instructions in that system, observing its requirements on article types, Korean and English abstracts, and reference style. The DOI prefix 10.3741 is registered for the journal, and published articles appear on Korea Science with full bibliographic records, which is also where most readers will read them.

Metrics and standing

Readers should treat this journal's metrics with the care its long history requires, because databases that key on the current ISSN registration see only the recent slice of the journal. SCImago, drawing on Scopus data, reports a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 0.193 for the journal in its 2024 data and places it in the fourth quartile (Q4) in Civil and Structural Engineering, Ecological Modeling and Environmental Science (miscellaneous), with Scopus coverage from 2019 under the current ISSNs. Aggregator summaries of the same Scopus data report a CiteScore of about 0.8. This directory's older template data quoted an h-index of 9, while SCImago-derived summaries give an h-index of 8; the difference is a reminder that these numbers move with each database refresh and should always be quoted with their source and year. OpenAlex, checked directly for this profile, returned no source record for either ISSN at checking time, so no OpenAlex figures are cited here; that absence reflects OpenAlex's coverage of this title under its current registration, not the journal's standing in its home literature.

The fairest summary of standing is qualitative. Within Korea, this is the reference journal of the water-resources profession: the place where Korean hydrology, hydraulics and water policy research has been published, refereed and argued over since 1968, and the journal Korean practitioners actually read. Internationally it sits in the specialist tier, visible through Scopus and Korea Science, cited mainly by the East Asian water community and by researchers working on Korean basins, Korean data or monsoon-region hydrology. Authors whose work speaks to Korean water problems, or who want their methods in front of that professional readership, will find few better-matched outlets; authors seeking a general international hydrology audience should weigh that specialisation honestly.

Indexing and access

The journal is carried on Korea Science, the national platform for Korean society journals, where its issues, articles and abstracts are openly readable; that platform presence is the main public access route and the one verified for this profile. It is indexed in the Korea Citation Index (KCI) and in Scopus, the two listings that matter most for its authors' evaluation at home and abroad, and it appears in SCImago's Scopus-based rankings. A direct search of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) by both ISSNs at checking time returned no listing, so this profile makes no DOAJ claim. Crossref registration is evidenced by the journal's DOI prefix, 10.3741/JKWRA, which appears on its articles from at least 2010 onward in the records sampled. Readers who need the journal's full current indexing list — for a tenure file or a funder report — should confirm it in the Scopus source list and the KCI journal information page, since indexing rosters change and directories lag behind them.

How to submit

Begin at the journal's submission portal, submission.jkwra.or.kr, and read the current author instructions there before preparing a manuscript; the portal, not any secondary listing, governs article types, formatting and the review pathway. Choose the article type that fits the work — full paper, review, short communication or discussion — and be honest in that choice, since the journal's readers and reviewers judge each type by its own standard. Write the abstract so that it works in both languages of the journal's readership: the Korean water community is the primary audience, and a clear statement of the basin, dataset or design problem addressed will do more for the paper's reception than any framing flourish. Hydrology and hydraulics manuscripts should report data sources, calibration and validation practice and uncertainty plainly, because this community checks methods closely and the discussion format gives other specialists a printed route to challenge weak work. After submission, expect peer review by specialists in the paper's sub-field, and expect the journal's monthly rhythm to keep the queue moving; exact timelines and any charges are stated in the portal and could not be verified independently for this profile, so confirm them there.

Related journals

Authors and readers working around this journal's territory in the Korean and regional literature will usually also consult the Journal of the Korean Society of Civil Engineers and the KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering for the civil-engineering side of water work; the Journal of Wetlands Research for wetland hydrology and ecology; the Journal of the Korean Society of Water and Wastewater for supply and sewerage engineering; the Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers for coastal hydraulics; and, internationally, journals such as Water Resources Management, Hydrological Processes and the Journal of Hydrology for the general research conversation into which this journal's best papers feed. Those titles are neighbours, not substitutes: the Journal of Korea Water Resources Association remains the one venue that covers the whole Korean water-resources field, in both of its working languages, under one society's roof.

Inside the journal: what its pages actually carry

A contents page from the journal's archive shows its range better than any scope statement. One monthly issue from its middle years (volume 48, number 7) opens with a hydraulic laboratory study of a broad-crested side weir, testing how a small downstream weir changes overflow discharge and proposing a revised discharge-coefficient equation checked against earlier experimental data. It continues with a measurement paper introducing two techniques for bubbly multiphase flow — a bubble image velocimetry method and a bundle fibre-optic flow meter — and applies them to hydraulic-jump flow in a river. A third paper couples the SWAT and MODFLOW models to map, well by well, how groundwater pumping near a Korean stream depletes streamflow, and draws contour maps that a permitting authority could use directly. The same issue carries an instrument-accuracy study of acoustic Doppler current profiler discharge measurement, comparing power-law and log-law extrapolations for the unmeasured zones near the surface and the bed; a flood-frequency study fitting stationary and non-stationary generalised extreme value models to inflow records from eight Korean multipurpose dams, including Chungju, Soyanggang, Andong and Daecheong; a drought-outlook study building an ensemble streamflow prediction system and testing its skill by season and lead time; and a soil-erosion experiment on how rainfall kinetic energy interacts with surface runoff to multiply sediment yield. Seven papers, and between them they touch laboratory hydraulics, field measurement, coupled modelling, design-flood statistics, forecast systems and erosion processes — the journal's whole territory in a single month.

More recent volumes show the same spread at larger scale. Volume 53 (2020) carried work on integrated water management policy, including a study that drew lessons for Korea's integrated quantity-and-quality water reforms from the governance of another networked industry. Volume 57 (2024) carried a domestic water-use study for the Chungcheong region that combined historical supply records with climate variables to project how monthly demand patterns shift under warming scenarios — water demand work that speaks directly to the national water management plan. Volume 58 (2025), including a supplementary issue, carried a study of a smart web-based data platform combining water quality and flow monitoring, built on international data standards and tested at river confluences and at Paldang Lake, with three-dimensional visualisation of algal-bloom-relevant variables. The pattern across six decades is consistent: Korean data, Korean basins and Korean institutions, treated with methods the international community can inspect and reuse. That is the journal's bargain with its readers, and it is why the archive functions as a reference shelf for Korean water practice and not merely as a publication venue.

Frequently asked questions

What are the ISSNs of the Journal of Korea Water Resources Association?

The current print ISSN is 2799-8746 and the electronic ISSN is 2799-8754, as shown on the journal's Korea Science page. The journal itself dates from 1968, so older volumes may be catalogued under earlier registrations.

Who publishes the journal?

The Korea Water Resources Association, the Korean professional society for water resources, publishes the journal monthly. The numeric publisher code in this directory's older data (7378) is not the publisher's name.

When was the journal founded and how often does it appear?

It was launched in 1968 and is published monthly; volume 58 appeared in 2025, which matches a 1968 first volume.

What subjects does it cover?

Water resources science and engineering in the round: hydrology, hydraulics, flood and drought analysis, groundwater, water quality, reservoir and river management, and water policy, with experimental, numerical, theoretical and analytical approaches all in scope.

Is the journal peer-reviewed and indexed?

Yes. Its scope statement confirms that all submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed. It is indexed in Scopus and in the Korea Citation Index (KCI), and its articles are openly readable on the Korea Science platform.

What are its citation metrics?

SCImago's Scopus-based listing reported an SJR of 0.193 and Q4 placements in its categories in 2024 data, with Scopus coverage from 2019 under the current ISSNs. OpenAlex held no record for either ISSN at checking time, and a DOAJ search by ISSN returned no listing at checking time; quote metrics with their source and year.

How do I submit a manuscript?

Through the journal's online submission system at submission.jkwra.or.kr, following the author instructions given there.