Obsidian can be used as a simple database for resaerch articles, notes and references. Here is my configuration:

Plugins needed:

Database Table

Firstly create a folder /Journal Articles to stoer all notes for reasearch articles, with one note per article. Then create a note outside the article, with the following dataview code:


```dataview
table tags as Tags, year as Year from "Journal Articles/" sort file.name asc
```

Note Template

Use the following template file with Templater. This template will read BibTex from your clipboard and automatically fill in frontmatter and title. Note that : cannot be in the title so it is replaced by -.

---
creation date: <% tp.file.creation_date("YYYY-MM-DD") %> 
modification date: <% tp.file.last_modified_date("YYYY-MM-DD") %>
tags: [] 
year: <% await tp.system.clipboard().then(text => { return text.match(/(?<=year=\{)(.*)(?=\})/g) }) %> 
title: <% await tp.system.clipboard().then(text => { return text.match(/(?<=title=\{)(.*)(?=\})/g)[0].replace(":", " -") }) %> 
author: [<% await tp.system.clipboard().then(text => { return text.match(/(?<=author=\{)(.*)(?=\})/g) }) %>] 
---

# BibTex

```
<% tp.system.clipboard() %>
```

# Notes



# Attachment


<% 
tp.file.rename(await tp.system.clipboard().then(text => {
    return text.match(/(?<=title=\{)(.*)(?=\})/g)[0].replace(":", " -");
}))
%>

Workflow

  1. Find a journal article or paper
  2. Copy the BibTex
  3. Create a note from the template.
  4. Drag or paste the attachment into the new note.

Example

BibTex copied:

@article{kalgutkar2019code,
  title={Code authorship attribution: Methods and challenges},
  author={Kalgutkar, Vaibhavi and Kaur, Ratinder and Gonzalez, Hugo and Stakhanova, Natalia and Matyukhina, Alina},
  journal={ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)},
  volume={52},
  number={1},
  pages={1--36},
  year={2019},
  publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}
}

The note:


---
creation date: 2022-04-08 
modification date: 2022-04-08
tags: [] 
year: 2019 
title: Code authorship attribution - Methods and challenges 
author: [Kalgutkar, Vaibhavi and Kaur, Ratinder and Gonzalez, Hugo and Stakhanova, Natalia and Matyukhina, Alina] 
---

# BibTex
```
@article{kalgutkar2019code,
  title={Code authorship attribution: Methods and challenges},
  author={Kalgutkar, Vaibhavi and Kaur, Ratinder and Gonzalez, Hugo and Stakhanova, Natalia and Matyukhina, Alina},
  journal={ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)},
  volume={52},
  number={1},
  pages={1--36},
  year={2019},
  publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}
}
```

# Notes



# Attachment

Dataview table:


```
table tags as Tags, year as Year, author as Author from "Journal Articles" sort file.name asc
```