With the traditional literature review, a bibliometric analysis of water research on the Yangtze River from 1996 to 2016 was presented on the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Web of Science database. This analysis revealed a quantitative and visual global scientific research review from the aspects of document type and language, publication year, authorship, subject categories and journals, countries or territories and institutions,

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... he most-frequently cited publications, author keywords and research trends. The annual number of publications in this field has rapidly increased over the past decade. The 20 most productive authors were all Chinese. The journals of Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Environmental Earth Sciences and Journal of Hydrology were the three most common journals. China produced 90.4% of all pertinent publications followed by the USA (13.7%) and Japan (4.0%). The Chinese Academy of Sciences was the major institution, producing 31.9% of all publications. The most frequently cited publications and author keywords provided the clues for research focuses. The hotspots and trends in this field included the impacts of climate change and human activities and the adaptation strategies. Additional studies should also be focused on water conservancy development, environmental issues and solutions and the Water-Food-Energy nexus.