Talent management (TM) has become a key business issue recently, while finding and keeping talents are also crucial in higher education (HE). However, no study summarizes the knowledge on TM of academics. Hence, we conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review searching for existing knowledge about and common processes of TM in HE, and the specialties of TM of academics. We searched for all publications on TM related to academia in Web of Science and Scopus. Non-English and non-article items were excluded resulting in 68 and 108 items, respectively. Eventually, 26 articles were found relevant for a deeper analysis. Besides descriptive statistical analyses, we reviewed the articles in light of our suggested new process-based TM model, which is based on Gagné's work. Findings advance the field by enhancing its theoretical bases, summarizing current knowledge, and posing important questions for future research, while also offering a model as an underlying structure.