They also suggest refocusing how water research is assessed; with more emphasis on whether the work leads to successful, practical solutions and less on counting the number of papers published and cited by other researchers.
Leading international agencies rank inadequate water supply and sanitation among the top-10 global risks, and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals set ambitious targets for improvement.
Despite the research and other efforts that have gone into trying to resolve the water challenges, "not many of them have been removed from the global development agenda", says Hamid Mehmood, a UNU-INWEH senior researcher, based in Hamilton, Ontario, in his paper, "Bibliometrics of Water Research: A Global Snapshot".
"Higher education related to water is a critical component of capacity development," according to Colin Mayfield, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in "Higher Education in the Water Sector: A Global Overview."
In their separate papers, Drs. Mayfield and Mehmood examine the weaknesses in water-related research and education systems and suggest reforms.
In both cases, with no global data source offering detailed information on educational activities in the water sector, or even listing water-resources programmes as a discrete category, the authors devised indirect strategies to extract information from several databases.
Mehmood entered a string of 1,057 search terms into the Scopus database, which indexes 22,800 journals, magazines and reports from more than 5,000 international publishers, to find trends in water-related publications and citations, between 2012 and 2017.
Mayfield also used Scopus as well as the Shanghai Academic Ranking System, the Times Higher Education (THE) website, the Ranking Web of Universities, Our World in Data and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics to get data on the location of the world's more than 28,000 universities that offer degrees in water-related programmes, particularly those with high academic rankings, as well as the obstacles and opportunities for researchers and students to access them.
Most troubling for both is the evidence that too little training and research takes place where water problems are most acute.
"Countries with protracted water problems in infrastructure, environment, agriculture, energy solutions do not seem to be at the forefront of water research production or knowledge transfer. Instead, global water research is reliant on the Western - particularly US - scientific outputs," Mehmood states. "Considering the regional and cross-boundary nature of water-related problems, the lack of regional knowledge flows is alarming."
All 15 countries leading in publications per million population are among the world's wealthiest, suggesting water research does not necessarily emerge as a reaction to water scarcity but, instead, to some economic value in a supply and sanitation industry expected to be worth $1tn in 2020.
China now leads the US in terms of the average number of times each published paper is cited in another study. But most Chinese research is cited in other Chinese papers. A far higher percentage of American papers are cited externally, a knowledge flow that gives US research more global influence and impact. "In water research, the USA remains more authoritative," Mehmood notes.
Mayfield's paper states that "overall, the state of education and training in the water sector varies between regions of the world", and the developed world has many concentrated places of excellence in water studies. That is less common in parts of Africa and Asia.
Both authors agree that assessing research impact by tabulating publication and citation numbers simply show how information circulates in academic circles without determining its practical impacts.
"To help accelerate solutions to global and national water challenges that many of these research papers are highlighting, the water research community needs to look beyond the research 'box' and identify ways to measure (the) development impact of water research programmes, rather (than) 'impact' based solely on academic impact measured in citations," Mehmood says.
"The research findings, learning and knowledge in these research publications needs to be conveyed in a practical way to the real users of this knowledge - stakeholders who are beyond research circles."
Similarly, Mayfield suggests teaching ratings be based on outcomes, including assessments by previous students after different intervals since graduation about the quality, content and relevance of their programs to their employment experience.
Concluded Dr. Vladimir Smakhtin, director of UNU-INWEH: "When it comes to water research, the publish or perish philosophy that drives many researchers must take second place to the goal of on-the-ground results, especially in the developing world where there must be also a more structured focus on water education in the future. We need to find ways to make these reforms, and soon; otherwise we will not achieve water-related SDGs. We hope these two papers stimulate the dialog on how to implement the changes required."