This paper reviewed some literature mainly on evaluation indicators for science popularization capacity, indicators weighting, evaluation model and so on by searching related keywords or topics, which provides a reference for designing national science popularization capacity evaluation indicators and its effect evaluation for the purpose of forming the national science popularization capacity monitoring and evaluation system. The four findings are as following: (i) the current studies on science popularization capacity still focus on regional level, and studies based on national level are still lacking; (ii) evaluation indicator system usually depends on the survey data from China Science Popularization Statistics but excludes some qualitative indicators such as science popularization organization construction and science popularization policy; (iii) the current papers generally use the cross section data but do not take into account the variable of time; (iv) there are short of quantitative researches analyzing the correlation between national science popularization capacity and civic scientific literacy and the effect of science popularization capacity factors on civic scientific literacy.