In order to understand more accurately the hot and key points of the doctor enrollment reform in China,the knowledge mapping of the reform of 160 doctoral admission systems from 1984 to 2017 in CNKI database were drawn by the Bicomb and SPSS. The result shows that the focus of the research mainly revolves around two main lines and five categories. The two main lines are: the doctoral examination and the quality of graduate education research,recruitment selection system and doctoral training mechanism re- search; the five categories include the doctoral candidate examination methods,enrollment system reform,doctoral training mecha- nism,postgraduate education quality and doctoral recruitment mechanism. Among them,the research on the enrollment examination re- form shows an increasing trend,and the“application - review”system will become an important guide to improve enrollment and selec- tion.