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Mendeley

This guide provides an overview of Mendeley along with training options, support and access information for Mendeley.

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is a reference manager, academic collaboration network and crowd-sourced database with a unique layer of social information research. Mendeley Desktop is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Mendeley Web functions on all major browsers. Mobile versions of Mendeley are available for iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

Click below for materials pertaining to the library's workshop handouts:

Citation Manager Comparison

Many people like to know the pros and cons between the various citation management software choices before they start using a particular tool.  Here is a brief overview of the differences between three common tools: Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley.  A more in-depth comparison between EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero is attached if you are interested.

  Zotero Mendeley EndNote
Cost Free Free Free for OSU Students through IS software licensing program; faculty/staff purchase annual license
Web based? Yes Yes, but not primarily Has web capabilities
Storage capacity Unlimited local storage and data syncing; Unlimited free Zotero file syncing if you register with an OSU email address Unlimited local storage and data syncing; 1GB personal and 100MB shared online space (larger online storage plans available for purchase) Unlimited local storage
Create group or shared libraries Yes Yes, free for up to 3 group members (larger group plans available for purchase) Yes, up to 15 members
Number of Citation Styles +10,000 styles +10,000 styles ~5000
 

Top 10 Mendeley Features

1. Join the Mendeley Academic Collaboration Network

Create an account and start interacting with over 4 million like-minded researchers.  

2. Import Your Reference Libraries from other Reference Managers such as Endnote and RefWorks

Download the Mendeley Migration Guide from this page to get started.

3. Join one of thousands of Public Groups or start your own Public Group.

Visit Mendeley's group directory to browse existing groups or create your own using our dedicated guide to public groups.

4. Create a Private Group and collaborate with colleagues by reading and annotating together.

Find out more in our dedicated guide to private groups.

5. Discover Readership Statistics about the paper you are reading.

Browse Mendeley’s crowd-sourced research catalog of millions of papers. 

6. Showcase your publication history.

Add your personal publications to your Mendeley profile using Mendeley Desktop, or by visiting your profile page.

7. Choose from one of 8000+ citation styles or create your own!

Use the CSL Editor to explore and modify existing styles. Automatically download journal styles from Elsevier's Author Guides.

8. Drag and drop PDFs automatically extract metadata about research papers.

Add new entries to your library in just a few seconds. Verify the extracted metadata manually, or automatically using a document identifier lookup.

9. Enable the File Organizer to bring order to your stored file.

Mendeley saves your references in the cloud, but you can also opt to download local copies and automatically rename the PDFs using a naming scheme you specify.

10. Mendeley Desktop is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Mendeley Web functions on all major browsers.

For more details, visit our dedicated resource center.