Grassland ecological compensation is an inevitable course to build ecological civilization in China. With the implementation of grassland ecological compensation policy in 2011, researchers carried out multi-perspective, systematic and quantitative studies on grassland ecological compensation. This article summarized literatures published in recent years in term of compensation subject, compensation object, compensation standard, compensation mode, the safeguard mechanism, herdsmen’s willingness and satisfaction, and compensation effect by literature analysis method. The results showed that state or government was the main compensation subject, while herder was the only compensation object. The current compensation standard was lower, especially for the grazing prohibition standard. The compensation method was relatively simple and the fund compensation was the most common way. The herders’ livelihood capital and income have become important research field. Most researches showed that there were some problems in the policy implementation, such as incompatibility between policy mechanisms and incentives, single source of compensation funds, the lower compensation standard, single compensation form, lacking of social security system and supervision, and defective legal mechanism. Finally, the following important aspects to ensure the effectiveness and continuity of compensation policy implementation was proposed: to strengthen and build a multi-disciplinary theoretical support research system, to seek unity of the scientific research methods, and to broaden the vision of research and assessment policy performance.