Xenia just found a fun new toy. Well, actually, it's a very sophisticated research management tool, but I'm a nerd, so I guess this qualifies as a fun toy for me. Mendeley integrates desktop software and a Web-based social research network to bring back the fun to researching. Bring back the fun? There was never fun to be had. Well this, my friend, is about to change…or so I hope. Mendeley addresses referencing and paper management issues and a whole lot more. After a couple of days of testing and — how else could it be — researching, I’m on the hype and eager to share.
Let’s start with a disclaimer: I’m not a tech-nerd. I love science and philosophy, but I don’t usually write about software or whatever is new on the Web. I’m writing this because Mendeley is a great tool for people interested in science. Although Mendeley is presented as the up and coming social networking Web 2.0 site for researchers, I’d like to show you how this gadget can be used as an e-learning tool for like-minded non-academics and students alike. It’s free, it’s intuitive and it’s backed by a promising concept and a dedicated team. I’m writing about Mendeley because I want other people who like to learn collaboratively to join the ride. Like all social networking systems, Mendeley will improve its performance and practicality with the growth of its user base. So I’m not entirely altruistic in giving you this information.
A few basic features — what Mendeley can do for you:
- The Mendeley site has a clean look, so it doesn’t overwhelm new users with cluttered information or distract and interrupt the workflow, also the software is easy to install and use.
- Mendeley indexes and organizes your PDF files and research papers like a playlist. You can tag, search and filter your documents and group them into labeled collections. Mendeley integrates an academic software component with a Web-based research network, which also functions as a backup system that’s in sync with the digital bibliography on your computer. This means you can work on your project or paper at home, on a shared campus library computer or anywhere you have Internet access.
- You can import old document details and citations through CiteULike and add new ones including, when possible, PDF files with a click of a bookmarklet in your browser.
- You can create bibliographies in Word and OpenOffice.
- Ultimately the makers of Mendeley would like to enable the program to automatically extract metadata and cited references from PDFs.
Full-text search, viewer and annotation tool: Mendeley lets you highlight and annotate your PDF files with sticky notes in the internal PDF-viewer of Mendeley desktop. The new version will enable the synchronization of the annotated versions with colleagues. This, I believe, holds great potential for collaborative work, just as...
Article comments
1 - Mr. Gunn
On behalf of Mendeley, THANKS!
What a nice review! You've pretty much figured out where things are heading with Mendeley in the future with recommendations and further improving how academics collaborate.
In fact, the future is now with regards to some of the things you mentioned: automatic PDF extraction is currently a feature of Mendeley Desktop, shared collections for sharing PDFs among colleagues is currently a feature, and public collections, which make available an RSS feed of items you add to the collection, is also a feature.
How do you like that?
2 - Xenia
Hello Mr. Gunn,
I like the features Mendeley currently has. But I love where Mendeley is going. If I didn't think it was a good referencing tool now, I wouldn't be using it to write my current philosophy paper. I'll put up a list of blogposts on Mendeley that discuss current features and how it stands up to other software -tomorrow. Gotta go help my friend move now :-)