The fuel cell (FC), as a clean and high-efficiency device, has drawn a great deal of attention in terms of both fundamentals and applications. However, the high cost and scarcity of the requisite platinum catalyst as well as a sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathode in FC have become the greatest barrier to large-scale industrial application of FC. The development of novel non-precious metal catalysts (NPMC) with excellent electrocatalytic performance has been viewed as an important strategy to promote the development of FC. Recent studies have proven that metal free carbon materials doped with heteroatom (e.g. N, B, P, S or Se) have also shown striking electrocatalytic performance for ORR and become an important category of potential candidates for replacing Pt-based catalysts. This review summarizes recent achievements in heteroatom doped carbon materials as ORR catalysts, and will be beneficial to future development of other novel low-cost NPMCs with high activities and long lifetimes for practical FC applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.