The reaction of formic acid with hydroxyl radical, which is considered to be relevant to atmospheric chemistry, has been extensively studied. A water-catalyzed process of this reaction is computationally studied here for the first time. The scaled hypersphere search method was used for global exploration of pre-reaction complexes. Calculations were performed at high level of theory, such as CCSD(T)/ccpVTZ//B3LYP/6-311+G(2df,2p) and CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ//MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ. It is found that the water-catalyzed process of this reaction is more kinetically favorable than its non-catalytic process. Such catalytic process may also be of interest for atmospheric chemistry, like the non-catalytic one. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.