Abstract: Exploration practices have proven that various types of shale oil are widely developed in the central lacustrine basin, demonstrating huge amount of resources with a great exploration prospect. By summarizing the important exploration advances and geological understandings of lacustrine shale oil in China, in combination with the geological characteristics of various types of shale oil, this study focuses on the key characterization parameters and methods of shale oil. The results show that:(I) The shale oil experiment project mainly involves five aspects including organic geochemistry, rock and mineral composition, reservoir properties, fluid properties and rock mechanics. Five key parameters including TOC, total porosity, oil content, free oil content and effective thickness are selected for shale oil characterization. (II) TOC indicates the total organic carbon content, for which combustion oxidation-non-dispersive infrared absorption method is the main experiment method. (III) Total porosity is the proportion of reservoir space to the total volume of rock, and can be obtained using the comprehensive characterization experiment method focusing on the physical properties and saturability tests of shale. (IV) Oil content refers to the total amount of hydrocarbons occurring in the reservoir space, including the amount of self-accumulated hydrocarbons under natural conditions and the potential amount of hydrocarbons generated by manual intervention. Closed coring method and oil content method is adopted for the shale oil with medium-high maturity and medium-low maturity respectively. (V) Free oil content is the amount of movable oil and gas in the shale systems, consisting of the theoretical and actual amount of movable hydrocarbon under the formation conditions and development conditions. It is obtained by closed coring and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, as well as the determination on the basis of actual production data. (VI) Effective thickness refers to the thickness of the shale section with commercial oil and gas controlled by a single well during horizontal well development. The upper and lower limit values are obtained by the evaluation of seven properties in well logging. It is of great significance to optimize the key parameters and methods suitable for shale oil characterization, to provide theoretical and technical support for the reserve evaluation and production capacity construction of lacustrine shale oil in China.