Based on the 524 literatures about initial water rights allocation in river basins collected from three citation databases of Web of Science and CNKI from 2000 to 2021, a visual analysis on the literatures from aspects of research institution and team of the authors and Keywords is conducted using Citespace software. The research progress of initial water rights allocation methods in river basins is reviewed. The results show that, the initial water rights allocation in a river basin is to take the average water resources of the river basin for many years (or the natural runoff under a certain hydrological frequency) as the total water consumption control index, and allocate it to the administrative regions and their industries according to the “basin-region-industry” hierarchical allocation mode, so as to promote the balanced and coordinated development of the regions and the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure. In the process of initial water rights allocation in a river basin, the dominant basis is the characteristics of economic and society in the administrative regions, so as to comprehensively reflect the multidimensional objectives of social equity, economic benefits, ecologic protection and risk control, clarify the principles of water rights allocation, develop a index system of water rights allocation, and establish a model of initial water rights allocation based on the allocation mode. In the future, it is urgent to thoroughly implement the green development concept of “determining production by water”, strengthen the rigid constraints and dual control actions of water resources, and explore the optimal adaptation mode of initial water rights and industrial structures.