This bibliographic article on Drought and Water Level examined the relationship between organizations, nations, institutions, authors, references, and publishers. It examined 742 papers from Web of Science at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology’s. The total annual publication volume of articles was increased steadily from 2012 to 2021, with China and the United States ranking first and second in terms of publication volume and citations but in quality Switzerland and England were top-level. Institutional-partnership analyses indicated disparities in network density and connections, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2012) receiving the highest citations and degrees. The document co-citation analysis (DCA) network was created to improve understanding of the frequency and amplitude of bursts of various publications in separate clusters. The most cited work was J Hydrol (2012), with 302 citations. The analytical tool from CiteSpace collected high-frequency keywords and performed co-occurrence, grouping, and emerging word recognition. Gorges Dam is the most crowded cluster, followed by drought stress. The greatest burst duration and most significant phrase is reservoir (2019), followed by “water quality,” which has a 5 year burst period. Estuaries perform important functions such as water purification and coastal. “Reservoir, water quality, restoration, phytoplankton, temperature, wetland, time series, diversity and carbon dioxide” are the most important terms, while “climate change, drought, water level, impact, growth, variability, response, dynamics, management and model” are the most frequently used keywords. In terms of citations, references, and academic influence, Zhang Q. (2012), the R Core team (2014), and Jappen E. (2015) were the top three contributors. Cook, ER (2013), and Allen, R.G. (2019) ranked first and second in terms of frequency, respectively. In this review work, significant information gaps were discovered in the areas of microbiological dynamics, environmental variables, fen peat incubation, lake water, drought risk reduction, biological ecology, lake acidification, salinity variations, and attribution. Future researchers should focus on these and similar topics, while Chinese and USA authors should concentrate on article quality rather than publishing numbers.