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As one of the most effective methods to measure the water resource pressure in the world, water footprint has attracted considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners and has led to a large number of related researches. However, few review papers have been published in this field, resulting in a lack of systematic understanding on the related research achievements. Therefore, by using the co-citation analysis in scientometric, this paper conducts a detailed analysis of 1320 papers on water footprint from the Web of Science database from 2006-2018. The results indicated that the USA, China and Netherlands occupy dominant positions in the water footprint field. Journal of Cleaner Production becomes the most productive journal followed by Ecological Indicators and Sustainability. University of Twente, Chinese Academy of Science and Beijing Normal University are the most prestigious institutions. Pro. Hoekstra AY, Pro. Mekonnen MM and Pro. Pfister S are the authoritative scholars. In addition, "life cycle assessment", "input-output analysis", "diet/food", "virtual water trade", "ecological footprint" and "water governance" are the main research areas; The Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard published by Hoekstra AY is the most cited reference; "climate change", "environmental footprint" and "energy-water-food nexus" are new research tendencies at present and in the future.