The 21st century is the era of the knowledge based economy, R&D personal is the final resource for knowledge-intensive enterprises to carry out the knowledge innovation and keep competitive advantage continuously. Nowadays, most experts focuses on the research involving the performance of R&D departments, projects, and teams, they pay little attention on the R&D personal performance evaluation. The methods for R&D personal performance evaluation are summarised and induced, the problems and difficulties of the research are reviewed, and finally, the research trend is pointed out.