Theses and dissertations provide a unique window into research performed in an academic community. Trends identified from doctoral dissertations offer insight into emerging research fronts and innovations. However, experimental details are buried in dissertations. In this study, the author analyzes 104 liquid crystal doctoral dissertations of the University from 2009 to 2020 from the OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center using Wolfram Mathematica. The most common unigram words, two-word phrases (bigrams) and three-word phrases (trigrams) were identified for dissertation titles and abstracts. Relative word frequencies of specific keywords in abstracts demonstrate research interest shifts over time. Title and abstract keywords community graphs (which connect keywords into communities) were created to determine associated research topics for idea clustering and concept discovery. This study demonstrates that analysis of dissertations reveals local research trends in the liquid crystals field. These results can benefit science and engineering librarians who support liquid crystal research, and the research method described here can provide a model for other librarians to conduct similar research in other areas.

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