The relationship between temperature and oxygen vacancy concentration is deduced in this paper. Based on the data of thermal weight-loss experiment, the formation enthalpies of congruent and several doped LN crystals have been calculated. It was found that the formation enthalpy of oxygen vacancies can be decreased evidently by doping valence-changeable ions. The experimental results were discussed and a new reduction process of the photorefractive LN crystal at a relatively low temperature was proposed, and the reduced crystals showed a good effect in practical use.