We conducted a literature search following the PRISMA guidelines using the keywords "specifications grading," "specs grading," "specifications-based grading," and "alternative grading" to find relevant publications ranging from October 2014 through September 2024 (Figure ). October 2014 was chosen as the start date because it was when Linda Nilson's book on the subject was published. The databases that were searched included: Web of Science, Scopus, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore, ScienceDirect, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Papers on Engineering Education Repository (PEER) and Physics Education Research (PER) Central. The number of publications identified using the search terms from each database is specified in Table . Several publications were identified through more than one database. Citation searching was used to locate any publications not found through the aforementioned databases. A total of 22 additional publications that met the inclusion criteria described below were found by this method. Table . Total number of publications found and included in this review, separated by the search database in which the publications were found. The total number of included publications below is greater than the number of publications in the corpus because multiple publications were found in more than one database. Because this review was intended to characterize the landscape of empirical research on specifications grading in the higher education (undergraduate-or graduate-level) setting, we focused on peer-reviewed publications (Table ). Theses, dissertations, and informal means of communication such as blogs, opinion pieces, social media exchanges, and websites were excluded from the corpus as they are not peer-reviewed. We limited the scope of this review to publications that describe the design and implementation of specifications grading systems. Publications that discussed the design of a specifications grading system, but did not implement it or that referenced the implementation of specifications grading without additional detail or expansion were excluded from analysis. Specifically, each publication was only included if commentary on the implementation of at least two of the four structural features of specifications grading -grade bundles, rubrics with specifications and defined passing thresholds, opportunities to revise and resubmit work, a token system -was included. As such, journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters were included, but conference abstracts, posters, and workshops were excluded as they lacked sufficient detail to meet the inclusion criteria. The total number of publications included in the corpus was 91. Two reviewers screened each publication for inclusion independently. Data from each publication was extracted by one reviewer and verified by a second reviewer. Because most publications included in the review were descriptive studies conducted by instructors on their own courses, risk of bias in individual studies was not assessed. Characteristics of courses were taken directly from the descriptions included in the publications, and disciplines were assigned based on the name or description of the course(s).