Cherts are widely distributed in Precambrian to Cenozoic orogenic belts and sedimentary basins.The origin and depositional environment of cherts are of great importance in understanding the regional paleogeographic, paleotectonic, paleo-ocean, and paleoclimate evolutions. After summarizing the existing geochemical methods for identifying the origin and depositional environment of cherts, it is concluded that the identification of the origin of cherts should focus on authigenic siliceous minerals and use exotic interfusion materials as references. Effective proxies include Al, Ti, Fe, Th, Ge/Si, Si isotopes, Rare Earth Elements (REE), etc. The essence of the discrimination of the depositional environment of cherts is to distinguish the relative contribution of terrigenous and hydrothermal materials; although previous discrimination diagrams provide practicability, they still involve errors and need to be used carefully. As an important type, cherts outcropped in orogenic belts are closely related to the Ocean Plate Stratigraphy (OPS). Here, a correlation scheme between them has been established. According to this correlation scheme, cherts outcropped in orogenic belts can be divided into the ridge subtype, pelagic abyssal plain subtype Ⅰ, pelagic abyssal plain subtype Ⅱ, ocean island-seamount subtype, intra-oceanic arc subtype, and forearc trench subtype. The cherts-OPS correlation scheme not only provides a basis for reconstructing the original sequence of the accretionary complex in an orogenic belt using cherts, but also considers cherts as important evidence for distinguishing the main oceanic basins from the back-arc and inter-arc oceanic basins. Taking the Eocene cherty ooze obtained by oceanic drilling in the Pacific as an example, it is suggested that the main oceanic basin is characterized by deep-sea plain cherty rocks that are almost unaffected by terrigenous and hydrothermal materials. These cherty rocks have geochemical characteristics such as Fe/Ti values close to 20, Eu/Eu* values close to 1.1 and negative Ce/Ce* values. These results provide new perspectives and references for subsequent research on cherts in orogenic belts.