Water and Energy International
Overview
Water and Energy International is an English-language monthly journal published in New Delhi by the Central Board of Irrigation and Power, known as CBIP. It carries technical articles, special features and news on the development and management of three connected sectors — water resources, power and renewable energy — for the engineers, utilities, researchers and officials who plan, build and operate India's dams, irrigation systems, power stations and grids.
The journal is one of the oldest continuously published technical periodicals in Indian engineering. CBIP's own history records that it began as the Irrigation and Power journal, issued quarterly since 1945, and was renamed Water and Energy International in 1995. The board states that it has published the journal monthly in its present form as a principal means of disseminating technical knowledge, and that it appears in both print and online versions.
The Publisher: Central Board of Irrigation and Power
CBIP was constituted in 1927 by the Government of India and now functions as a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, headquartered at Malcha Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. It describes itself as a premier institution serving the nation in the disciplines of power, water resources, renewable energy and allied sectors for more than nine decades. Its original purpose was to let provincial governments obtain authoritative second opinions on irrigation projects and to give the Government of India advice on technical questions and inter-provincial disputes over shared water sources — a knowledge-sharing role the journal still performs.
Publishing is one of the board's main activities. CBIP states that it has brought out about 1,500 technical publications, including manuals, guidelines, specifications and technical literature on design, construction, operation, maintenance and commissioning, some of which are used as text and reference books in technical institutions and design offices. Water and Energy International is the monthly periodical at the centre of that programme, sitting alongside conference proceedings, special publications and the journals of associated international bodies whose Indian chapters have their secretariat at CBIP.
History: From Irrigation and Power, 1945, to the Present Title
The journal's lineage begins in 1945, when the Irrigation and Power journal began quarterly publication, carrying technical articles and news on irrigation and allied activities at home and abroad. CBIP's history records that publication was changed to a monthly from 1960 to 1963, after which quarterly issues resumed, and that the journal was renamed Water and Energy International in 1995. A CBIP call for papers describes the journal as published for the last 75 years, counting from those 1945 beginnings.
The 1995 renaming tells its own story. A journal born to serve irrigation engineers had, over fifty years, become the record of a sector in which water and energy could no longer be separated: hydroelectric projects served both, thermal and nuclear power depended on water, and renewable energy was emerging. The new name kept both halves of the board's title — water and energy — and added an international outlook matching the board's role as Indian home to global professional societies. Since April 2010, the board's abstracts publication, which had abstracted important articles from the literature received in its library, has been folded into Water and Energy International rather than issued separately, further consolidating the journal as the board's single flagship periodical.
Scope: Power
On the energy side, CBIP lists the areas its publications cover as hydro power, thermal power, nuclear power, non-conventional energy, transmission systems, distribution, power system operation and protection, and metering. The journal's articles and special features follow the same map: generation technologies, the transmission and distribution networks that move electricity, and the operation, protection and metering systems that keep a grid stable and accountable.
Special issues have been brought out for major projects, which CBIP's history lists as including the Nathpa Jhakri hydroelectric project of 1,500 MW, the Tehri hydroelectric project, the Indira Sagar project, the Omkareshwar project, Chamera hydroelectric Stage II of 300 MW and the Nangal Hydel Channel. Such issues give a single large project a complete technical record — design, construction and lessons — of lasting value to engineers working on comparable schemes.
Scope: Water Resources and Renewable Energy
On the water side, the board's publication areas include contract management, environmental issues, geosynthetics, groundwater, hydraulic structures, hydrology and meteorology, landslides, natural hazard management, remote sensing and GIS applications, river behaviour, training and management, sedimentation, soil and materials, and tunnels and underground works. That list, reflected in the journal's contents, spans the full life of water infrastructure, from rainfall and river behaviour through dam and tunnel engineering to the management of sediment, hazards and the environment.
Renewable energy stands as the journal's third sector in its current description, which the board phrases as covering special features on development and management activities in water resources, power and renewable energy. In a journal whose power coverage began with hydroelectricity — itself renewable — the addition is a natural extension, and it connects the journal to the same energy transition that occupies Indian engineering as a whole.
Indexing and Bibliographic Identity
The journal is identified by its print ISSN 0974-4207 and electronic ISSN 0974-4711 in current journal databases. A CBIP call for papers states that the journal has been indexed by leading agencies including Scopus, J-Gate, EBSCO Discovery, Summon from ProQuest, Google Scholar, Indian Science Abstracts, the Indian Citation Index, Agricola and Geobase. Journal metrics services report a CiteScore of 0.2 for the title, a modest figure typical of a practitioner-oriented national engineering journal whose primary purpose is professional dissemination rather than citation competition.
That indexing matters practically. Indian engineers and academics who publish project experience, design studies and research in the journal can point to a Scopus-indexed, decades-old periodical of a Government of India-founded board, and libraries and researchers can trace the title through the standard scholarly databases. An older ISSN, 0972-057X, appears in some ranking records for the journal's earlier coverage years, reflecting its long and renamed history.
Audience and Circulation
CBIP describes the journal's circulation in professional terms. Its call for papers states that the monthly journal is circulated to key personnel of the rank of Chief Engineer and above across the power, renewable energy and water resources sectors in India and abroad, besides leading private power sector organisations. Member organisations of the board receive the journal among their benefits, including free online access to soft copies of CBIP documents for their officers, and individual copies reach the heads of member organisations along with other CBIP periodicals and maps.
The readership is therefore senior and institutional: chief engineers and above in government departments, public sector undertakings and utilities, executives in private power and water companies, consultants, and academics in civil, electrical and water resources engineering. It is a journal read in the offices where projects are sanctioned and designed, which is precisely the audience its authors — often project engineers themselves — most want to reach.
Associated Journals and the CBIP Library
Water and Energy International does not stand alone. CBIP houses the secretariats of the Indian chapters of international societies including ICOLD for large dams, the International Tunnelling Association, the International Water Resources Association, the International Society for Rock Mechanics, the Indian Geotechnical Society, the World Water Council's Indian presence, CIGRE for large electric systems, and bodies for irrigation, drainage, hydrology and related fields, which also bring out half-yearly journals. The board's membership material lists companion periodicals historically issued alongside the flagship, including research digests and news publications for the water and energy sectors.
The board also maintains one of the biggest libraries on irrigation and power engineering, in its own description, and its abstracting work drew on that library's holdings. With the abstracts merged into the journal since 2010, readers of Water and Energy International receive both original technical articles and a window on the wider literature of their fields in a single monthly publication.
Role in Indian Engineering
For more than seventy-five years in its successive forms, this journal has been the printed memory of Indian water and power engineering. It has recorded the building of the great river valley and hydroelectric projects, the growth of thermal, nuclear and renewable generation, and the professional debates of the engineers responsible. Because its publisher is a board founded by the Government of India in 1927 to spread technical experience from one province to all, the journal's knowledge-sharing mission is constitutional rather than commercial.
In the present century that mission extends to research coordination. CBIP coordinated and monitored research and development activities and research schemes on power, river valley projects, flood control and plasticulture, with results discussed at its research sessions, and the journal is the natural channel through which such findings reach practising engineers. Few technical journals anywhere can claim an unbroken institutional lineage from 1945, a publisher approaching its centenary, and a readership defined by the chief engineers of a nation's water and power sectors.
How to Read and Contribute
Water and Energy International is published monthly by the Central Board of Irrigation and Power in New Delhi, in print and online versions, with information on the board's publications available through cbip.org and its publications site. CBIP actively invites articles and case studies for the journal from organisations and institutions working in the power, renewable energy and water resources sectors, and the journal is supplied to member organisations and senior sector personnel as described above.
Engineers wishing to publish project experience, and readers in utilities, government departments, consultancies and universities who need a monthly Indian journal spanning dams to distribution networks, will find the essentials here: monthly frequency, English language, print ISSN 0974-4207, electronic ISSN 0974-4711, published by CBIP, New Delhi, under its present title since 1995 and in continuous lineage since 1945.
