Abstract: Soil organic carbon(SOC)sequestration potential is relevant to its stability.How to extract the labile and stable carbon fractions is essential to quantitatively characterize the SOC stability.At present, various methods, including physical, chemical and biological methods are being used to extract the labile and stable carbon fractions, however, it is difficult to compare the results generated from different methodologies.Meanwhile, those methods have disadvantages such as time-consuming, high cost, and complex operation process.Hence, it is urgent to seek an efficient and reliable method, which also can be widely applied in research areas.The present review compares different thermal analysis methods including Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy(PC/MS), Thermogravimetry(TG), Differential Scanning Calorimetry(DSC)and Rock-Eval(RE).RE method is the least time consuming with lowest cost, and can reflect SOC stability representatively and efficiently, which has been applied on the comparison across studies.Citespace is employed to assess the development of RE method and its application status.The RE method is useful to construct the SOC monitoring system in China by establishing a comparative network system to investigate labile and stable carbon pools under different land use patterns, climatic zones, and different soil textures.