Mendeley Academic Software To Manage And Share Research Papers

Mendeley is a free academic software to manage and share research papers online, or by using the Mendeley desktop program.

The desktop version is available for multiple operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh.

The academic software runs on the computer desktop, and can be used to add research papers to its inventory.  These papers can be added from the local computer system, network and even online document sites like Google Book Search, Amazon, PubMed, Science Direct and WorldCat.

Mendeley

Mendeley scans the documents and add metadata automatically if available. This automatic scan and data extraction works surprisingly well, but it is always possible to check and edit data manually after the import completes. This gives you control over the data, and may be used to correct errors, or add information that were not retrieved automatically.

The online import is controlled by a bookmarklet which sends information about the currently selected document to Mendeley. This could cause some XSS warnings if tools like NoScript are installed.

The desktop application can be synced with the online account to make sure that the data sets are the same. The academic software includes information about the selected research paper, book or document if those are provided by the publication. Information includes authors, titles, publishers, keywords, pages, dates and references. Mendely offers the following features in its desktop client:

• Full-text search, tag, share and collaboratively manage your research papers
• Add tags and notes to documents
• Create document groups to organize your papers
• Apply different citation styles
• Export your library to EndNote XML, RIS, or BibTex, or copy library entries formatted in the chosen citation style
• Cite documents in Microsoft Word and automatically create bibliographies

It is possible to use Mendely strictly as a desktop application with syncing it to the online account. This would however mean to miss some of the most powerful features of the academic software. It is for example possible to invite members so that it is possible to share research papers. This is excellent for projects that multiple researchers work on. Users will also be notified about profile updates of their contacts.

Verdict

Mendeley is a handy desktop program and online service for researchers, students, book authors, script writers, scientists, and anyone else who works with research papers or other document types.

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