Abstract: Over the world, the emergence and development of think tanks have extremely important
strategic significance. In China, more and more departments at all levels attach great importance to the
construction of new think tanks with characteristics. In order to understand the research progress and trend
in the field of think tanks, 286 doctoral dissertations on think tanks were obtained through WANFANG
DATA and CNKI, which were used as data sources. Statistical analysis was carried out from the aspects
of search terms, time distribution, subject and specialty distribution, granting units, keywords, research
topics and citation frequency. The results show that in recent years, the research of think tanks in China
has been on the rise in general, with the characteristics of “rapid increase in number”, “concentration of
disciplines”, “divergence of topics”, “themes with breadth and depth”, “prominent high-yielding years”
and “lack of continuity”. New types of think tanks such as incorrupt government think tanks, education
think tanks, science and technology think tanks, big data think tanks and media think tanks have emerged
and gradually entered the research field. The study thus indicated that the research of doctoral dissertations
in the field of think tanks has entered or will enter a new stage. At the same time, in order to promote the
dual construction of think tanks and disciplines, this paper puts forward the idea of setting up first-level
disciplines or specialties of think tanks.

Key words: Think tanks, Dissertation, Bibliometric analysis, Document characteristics, Academic heritage, Discipline construction, Think-tank talent