The quest for clean water should not only be dependent on traditional water treatment strategies when we consider the water scarcity, quality and overall stress that we are facing in many parts of the world1. It has become even more apparent that in order to attain minimum acceptable level standards of water quality, a multi-pronged approach which should be foregrounded on the diversity of intellectual knowledge and capacity is required. This approach should be include, but not limited to, various types of engineers, physical and natural scientists, social and political scientists, and policy makers to mention a few2. The multi-disciplinary research inputs geared towards disseminating the latest findings and perspectives on various topics pertaining to increasing the wealth of knowledge of what is known at present thus empowering researchers and practitioners in water related fields, is what npj Clean Water journal seeks to embody and champion. This has been the major mission of the journal from inception and this agenda will be maintained and further enhanced as we publish excellent research papers in the near future.

Nowadays, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Internet of Things, Sensor Device Fabrication and Data Science, we now appreciate each day how these areas in fields which previously might have been thought to have little to do with water issues, positively impact on water management, water availability and online monitoring of water quality in a smart and intelligent manner3. Similarly, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Microbiology, Membrane Science and Technology, Resource Recovery from Wastewater, Water Reuse and developments in energy research pertaining to storage, utilization and exploiting the capacity of Solar Energy (including Photocatalysis), Fuel Cells, continue to redefine and reshape researchers’ value proposition in addressing water related challenges4. As much as we embrace and promote these new technologies with respect to what they promise to offer by making water more suitable for drinking or application in various quarters, the acceptability of these interventions and regimes should be communicated to communities in an acceptable, accessible and palatable fashion. It is for this reason that some collections in npj Clean Water journal should contain social science, economics and political perspectives that may resonate with a reader whose background knowledge is not necessarily from engineering and science disciplines. After all, these special issues are aligned to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other signed World Accords that address water related matters, both directly and indirectly (https://www.nature.com/npjcleanwater/aims)5.

The multidisciplinary trajectory of npj Clean Water journal and the insistence on high quality research papers for stringent peer review before publishing which encompass the scope of the journal, is a non-negotiable towards excellence as the journal continues to unequivocally define its own kind and brand of contribution to existing knowledge apart from other thematic journals that readers and researchers are exposed to. Since npj Clean Water journal was founded in 2018 under the leadership of my predecessor, Professor Eric Hoek, the impact factor of the journal has risen steadily with a current 5-year Impact Factor of 12.8. Having been a member of the Editorial Team of this journal, as an Associate Editor from its inception, npj Clean Water is on the right path with publishing ground breaking research and extending boundaries of knowledge frontiers to become one of the premier reference peer-reviewed journals in addressing health and social water challenges whose genesis could be compromised water quality and lack of water resources.