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Mendeley reference management tool (Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay)

Mendeley

a reference management tool

Mendeley, a free platform from the Elsevier group that integrates well with Scopus, is a multifunctional tool designed to import, organise and share your bibliographic references and research documents (reference management tool) but also to enable searches in the bibliographic database available in the web version; in addition to these functions, there are services typical of an academic social network capable of managing collaboration among researchers.

 

Main characteristics of Mendeley


Management of bibliographic references

  • Organisation of citations: Mendeley enables you to import into your library the bibliographic references that you need and to organise them in thematic collections as you wish. 
  • Insertion and automatic formatting of references: the platform integrates with writing programs such as Microsoft Word and LibreOffice, enabling the automatic insertion of references and the generation of bibliographies in various citational styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard and others).
  • Integration with MS Word: via the Mendeley Cite plug-in, while writing in MS Word you can speed up the process of acquisition of the bibliographic references present in your Mendeley library. 
  • BibTeX support: if you use LaTeX, Mendeley supports the exporting of references in BibTeX format, facilitating the management of the bibliographic references in LaTeX documents. 


Archiving of documents and files

  • Archiving of documents: you can save and organise PDF files and other file formats within your library.
  • Annotations of files: you can annotate, highlight and add notes directly to the files, facilitating the revision and study of the materials.


Desktop and cloud versions 

  • Desktop version: at this page you can find the plug-ins for installing Mendeley Reference Manager on your PC, available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.  
  • Cloud version: with this version you can access your Mendeley library from any device, including computers, tablets and smartphones. This version also enables the use of search in the Mendeley bibliographic database. 
  • Synchronisation: synchronise your library from the Desktop version; in this mode in the section “Recently added” you can find the new references that you have added to your library from the cloud version via the web importer (an extension of the browser available only for Chrome and Firefox). 


Collaboration and sharing

  • Research groups: Mendeley supports the creation of private or public groups where you can collaborate in the sharing of documents and bibliographic references. This function is particularly useful for study groups, joint research projects or academic collaborations.
  • Sharing of documents: the members of a group can share articles and annotations, facilitating the collaborative revision of scientific literature.


Exploration of scientific literature

  • Mendeley suggest: this feature Mendeley offers personalised suggestions for scientific articles based on the bibliographic references already present in your library, aiding in finding new correlated literature.
  • Researchers' network: Mendeley is also a social platform where you can follow other researchers, explore their profiles and find out which articles they are reading or recommending.


Annotations tools

  • Annotations and underlining: you can annotate PDFs directly in your library, underlining important parts or writing margin notes, organising this information in a structured way within the documents.
  • Search in annotations: annotations and notes can be searched with ease, making it a simple matter to retrieve key information within a broad corpus of documents.
     


Access and services available

  • Mendeley is available free of charge: : you can register with your SNS credentials (but also with others) and thus access all the main functions accessible in this mode. The free version offers a limited storage space on cloud (2 GB).
  • Premium version: the premium version, for payment (not subscribed to by the SNS Library), offers greater storage space and the possibility to create larger research groups. 
     

 

Mendeley and Scopus

Scopus and Mendeley are the property of the same society (Elsevier) and share the same login for the exporting of bibliographic references.

Scopus is one of the main databases for bibliographic search present on the market; designed for finding publications, it is enhanced with analyses of citations and bibliometric data for monitoring the impact of research. 
Mendeley, although offering a bibliographic database in its web version, was mainly conceived for assisting researchers in organising and citing bibliographic references and for sharing the information collected with others.

The Mendeley database includes articles uploaded by users; hence, although both databases index scientific articles, mainly journal articles and proceedings, not all the documents present in Mendeley are present in Scopus; however, above all the opposite is true, that is, that the volume of bibliographic search of Scopus is much larger to give an example of the scale difference: on Scopus the search All fields = Lie algebras yields more than 130,000 results, whereas in Mendeley the hits number just a little over 30,000).    

Scopus bibliographic database offers the direct exporting of documents, lists of results and Mendeley references via the Mendeley web importer. 
 

Tutorials and guides

At this page you will find guides for the use of the various Mendeley services. The FAQs and the News section are available at the Support Center.

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