A joint research team composed of Dr.
 Bayan Abdul-Muttalib Mahdi and Dr. Raghad Shubar Jaafar from the Center for Marine Sciences and Assistant Lecturer Muhammad Salem Mawayl from the College of Science a research paper entitled "Adopting the water quality index to assess the validity of groundwater in Al-Zubair city southern Iraq for drinking and human consumption" in the scientific journal Ecology.  The journal of Environment and Conservation, which is indexed within Scopus with Score 0.3. The research invistigate  the use of the water quality index in evaluating well water and its suitability for human consumption. The research concluded that the studied well water was unfit for human consumption.