Water Resources Protection was founded in 1985. The members of its editorial board are renowned experts and scholars working in water resources divisions in China, bureaus of water resources protection in the main basins of China, including the Yangtze River Basin, the Yellow River Basin, the Huaihe Basin, the Pearl River Basin, the Haihe Basin, the Songliao Baisn, and the Taihu Basin, and research institutes and colleges or universities, and they have made a great effort in selecting and reviewing papers in order to ensure the high quality of the journal.

Water Resources Protection is in the lists of Chinese Science Citation Database,An Overview of the Main contents of the Chinese Core Periodicals,Chinese Core Journals of Science and Technology (Journals of Statistics Sources of Scientific and Technological Papers in China), and RCCSE Chinese  Authoritative Academic Journals (by Research Center for Chinese Science Evaluation). It is indexed in the well-known international database as the following: Engineering Inedx(EI), Chemical Abstracts (CA), and is included in full text in major databases including China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD), Chinese Core Journal (Selecting) Database (Wanfang Data), and Chinese Scientific and Technological Journals Database (VIP).The editorial board consists of over 40 well-known scholars and professors throughout the country, including academicians from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.