The first thing to do is to import your research papers into Mendeley Desktop. You can do this manually by using the "Add Document" button on the interface or you can import existing EndNote XML, RIS, or BibTex files.
You can also drag and drop your PDFs into Mendeley Desktop, where it will then extract the document details, keywords and cited references. It also looks up Cross-Ref DOIs, arXiv IDs and PubMed document details automatically.
Your library of research papers will all be neatly and intuitively organized. You can search through your bibliography manager and filter by author, journal, keywords and even by assigning your own tags. This gives you immediate and quick access to your documents. Mendeley will even suggest papers not in your library which are similar in content or context.
To make life even easier, Mendeley can also take care of renaming your papers to more user-friendly file names. The bibliography manager can automatically rename all of your files to the same name format such as "Author - Title.pdf", making it even easier to manage your research papers. There is also the folder monitoring tool, which allows Mendeley Desktop to automatically import any new files that you place into your selected folders.
You can access your Mendeley bibliography from any computer by having an online account. This means that whatever operating system you are using and wherever you are in the world, you can manipulate your bibliography and access it with ease.
Open and read PDFs in the internal PDF viewer. You can view PDFs in glorious full-screen mode, and the search-as-you-type function allows you to discover all instances of your search term immediately.
You can highlight text with the text marker tool and add sticky notes to capture your thoughts. In the next release (v0.9.6) these annotations can also be synchronized with colleagues, enabling you to share comments on reading material for your research projects.
Now you can manage and view everything in one place: Bibliographic data, PDFs, PDF annotations and highlights, cited references, searchable full-text, keywords, and your tags.
Using our plugins for Word (Windows only for now) and OpenOffice (all platforms), you can automatically generate reference lists in over 100 citation styles. All of the most popular styles are included, e.g. ACM, American Chemical Society (ACS), American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style, Elsevier, Harvard Reference Format, IEEE, Modern Language Association (MLA), National Library of Medicine, Nature, Public Library of Science (PLoS), or Science.
All you need to do is click "Insert Citation" in the Word or OpenOffice Writer plugin, select one or multiple (pressing CTRL+select) documents in Mendeley Desktop, and click "Send to Citation to Word/OpenOffice". The references will then be inserted into your document. Finally, click "Insert Bibliography" and choose your desired citation style in the dropdown.
You can even edit documents and insert citations collaboratively. The easiest way to do this is to add all relevant documents to a Shared Collection and cite them from there.
Drag and drop the Web Importer into your browser bar and then use it whenever you want to store a document. This means that you don't have to go through the trouble of downloading a copy and then uploading it manually into your digital library.
With just one click of this button, Mendeley automatically imports the document details, citations and any PDF files where available. All of this information is stored directly to your Mendeley library.
This is especially useful for those moments when you need to collect a lot of papers, and quickly. Mendeley Desktop will also back up everything into your online bibliography which you can access and manage from anywhere.
You can capture papers from the following services:
Mendeley is fully integrated with Zotero and CiteULike. If you already use either of these two browser-based applications to manage your references, you can set up Mendeley to continuously import any documents you add to Zotero or CiteULike, saving you time and effort. This synchronization allows you to manage all of your bibliographic data in one place.
If you currently use Endnote™ or RefWorks for reference management, you can easily import your library into Mendeley using EndNote's™ .XML format or .RIS format available in RefWorks.
The research network is made up of all the other Mendeley users. You will find that many have research interests similar to yours. You can connect and share ideas, papers, experiences and much more. You can conduct a people search or find other researchers connected to your specialist area through your current contacts too. You can also start off by inviting your colleagues and friends who work in the same research area.
By inviting your friends or research group even, you can use the Shared Collections tool so that you have an easy platform to share information on. You can drag and drop any documents of interest in there and they are then available to your group for viewing or collective annotating.
The network also provides access to a vast database of research papers. Many of these are free to download so you will be able to add these to your library easily and efficiently. Papers found in libraries of your fellow researchers will no doubt be of use to you. This is a fantastic way to learn about new trends and research in your academic speciality.
Mendeley allows you to discover and aggregate anonymous statistics about research trends. You can view the most popular authors, papers, journals and tags in your academic discipline, and discover interesting statistics about your own research paper library. These include viewing the number of papers by specific authors, most frequently used tags, the number of articles in your library, the number of authors and the number of references cited by these papers. You can also view your top publication outlets by topic. These statistics allow you to have a good overview of what your research habits and priorities are at this time.
