Network database - general question

[stevenvanuytsel]

I have a general question of which I don't know in what sub-area to post it, so here goes:

I am making a database consisting of all the scientific articles I've read. This database contains information on (1) date I read it; (2) Name and first name of 1st author; (2) Name and first name of last author; (3) The scientific field; (4) Year published; (5) Journal published; (6) University of last author; (7) IF of journal; (8) Abstract; (9) 4 Keywords that I give in myself.

Secondly, I would like to make a second database where I link the articles I've read that refer to eachother, to eventually make a network view. For example: in article a (which is situated in oncology) I find two interesting references (article b and c, which are in the fields of oncology and immunology, respectively). I will read articles b and c and add them to my primary database. Subsequently I would want to link article a (source) to article b and c in order to make a network view (nodes are article a, b, and c and connections going from a to b and a to c). Ideally, They will also be grouped in oncology (article a and b) and immunology (article c). How would one go about to make this?

Secondly, I have no idea if a network-view can be generated from within access. Maybe it is necessary to use another program to do this, do you have any suggestions of which programs could be useful?

Thank you upfront for helping me, because I feel this is not such a simple question.

Kind regards,
Steven

[ranman256]

Access can show the relationships, but what network view?
This data can be used on a network, for many to share.
But If you mean display a spiderweb of nodes (articles) joined together ,then no. For that you'd need a display program to graphically interpret and show the nodes.

Access CAN show you the linked articles In a spreadsheet format. You'd need the master table for the article.
and maybe a sub table for authors. Your example has only 2 fields, that may not be enough, if articles can have > 1 author.
hence, the sub table tAuthors, for many authors.

And another table for article ''links',...tLinks would join the 3 articles...
A,B
B,C
C,A

[CJ_London]

sounds like you are either talking about trees so article a has two children (b and c) which in turn may have further children. But by the same token - if you are reading article b - wouldn't a be a child of b?

So you might be talking about many to many relationships - articles based on different subjects (one article can have many subjects, one subject can have many articles)

Or perhaps you are talking about both?

Both are doable in Access, trees are more complex because they require using recursive code, many to many relationships are very straight forward.

For a many to many relationship your data you would have 3 tables

tblSubjects
SubjectPK autonumber
SubjectName text

tblArticles
ArticlePK autonumber
ArticleTitle text
Author text
PubDate Date
...
...

tblArticleSubjects - this lists the subjects the article deals with. Search on SubjectFK to find all articles dealing with the subject
ASPK autonumber
ArticleFK long
SubjectFK long

but you also want to cross reference between articles, so you need another table

tblReference
ReferencePK autonumber
SubjectFK - long (may not be required, but provides reason for the reference)
ArticleFK - long (e.g. link to article a)
RefArticleFK - long (e.g. 2 records, one linking to article b and the other to article c)

this is fine if you stop here - one 'layer' down.

But perhaps article b links to article e (on the same subject or not) so you need to feed RefArticleFK back into the query as a criteria for ArticleFK - this is where it becomes recursive. This can be done in VBA code and is typically used to populate a tree control.