Water Quality Research Journal Chief Editor: Arash Zamyadi
In the video below, Zarash gives an insightful review of WQRJ:
What makes WQRJ a stand-out journal?
I believe what makes WQRJ stand out is that we started by covering lots of environmental monitoring and wastewater topics but now we are actually covering everything in the field of water- from the source, to distribution, to the wastewater and then the return of that to nature. So I believe we are the ‘water circular economy journal’ so we cover all the steps from the moment the rain drops, comes in the water, or desalination, river to water, all the way to treating it then it goes back to nature. So that is what I think is one of the biggest advantages of this journal and also our amazing group of associate editors that are both academic and industry based internationally. So I think, in summary, these are the two things that make our journal really stand out.
What sort of impact do think the journal has in the global research community?
So I believe one of our biggest impacts we have, is that we bring in knowledge, fundamental knowledge and applied knowledge, and choose application. So that is what our strength is, to bridge this gap between the knowledge creation and its application and that is what I personally am passionate about- fundamental knowledge is very important but I don’t believe it should sit on a shelf and take dust, it should be used and I think the knowledge should have an impact, should use real applications and I believe at WQRJ that is what we are doing. We are bringing that knowledge to the application and showing its real-world applications and that is what lots of our papers are about and I strongly support that. And also we want to connect both, as I mentioned, to do that we have to connect industry to research and research to the industry and that’s why we have associate editors in everything we do: Chief Editors- one academic one from industry (I’m from water research Australia which we manage industrial research for the field of water) and also in our associate editors we have half from industry, from major utilities in Australia for example, and half from academia. So that is the impact we want to bring and I think we have the tools to bring this impact to the water sector.
What new trends or areas of research are you particularly excited to share in the journal?
Currently we are running a nationwide project on monitoring COVID-19 virus in sewage which is called ColoSSoS (Collaboration on Sewage Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2) and this is an Australian nation-wide programme that we are running and we work with lots of international partners from the Netherlands, Canada, United States and other countries and regions. We were thinking about monitoring COVID in sewage and we came to the conclusion that we should go beyond monitoring COVID in sewage and think about the concept of wastewater-based epidemiology. Peter (other WQRJ Chief Editor) and I will look into that concept and how it can impact the current pandemic and how this use of wastewater-based epidemiology is actually helping our health responses. For example just recently here in the state of Victoria in a regional town there was no clinical testing and tracing of COVID and wastewater-based epidemiology helped to identify the fractions of RNA in the sewage and the health authorities set up clinical testing facilities and they found there was actually no infection within the community but somebody probably passed through. That was a huge relief obviously but also prompted a huge response. So that is what we are passionate about. This water-based epidemiology is not new. There are lots of leading researchers in Australia for example that look at the chemicals in the water-based epidemiology’s, it was used for example for polio but I think we have to see it’s applications, how we can use it with our health responders and we have actually done a special issue we have launched and it is accepting papers at the moment. The goal that I am really excited about I think is a new trend and it’s one thing I think also the water industry can bring contributions to society this wastewater-based epidemiology and its applications for health responses for example. So that is a topic we are passionate about that the whole editorial board of the journal are passionate about and as I mentioned there is a special issue now that is accepting papers until the end of the year so I look forward to see what people are going to submit in that. I’ve seen a few paper submissions from Italy so it’s very interesting that people are looking at it from different regions in the world so I’m super excited about that.
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