Mendeley is a web-based bibliographic manager that also functions as a social networking site for researchers. While web-based, Mendeley offers a standalone desktop app for organizing and storing your references and related files. It is popular with professional academics who want to showcase their work, collaborate with colleagues, and organize the information sources on their hard drives.
Features of Mendeley include:
You can sign up for a new, free Mendeley account at www.mendeley.com. Please note that a free account will grant you 2 GB of online storage space for your documents. You can pay to upgrade to accounts with larger storage space and improved features.
If you want to store and organize references and documents on your hard drive, you will need to download Mendeley Desktop. This installation includes a plug-in for Microsoft Word that allows you to link your Mendeley library to documents you're writing. Outlook and Word must be closed before this installation takes place.
If you want to easily capture bibliographic information from your web browser screen, you will need to download the Web Importer bookmarklet. This can be done from your Mendeley Feed screen once you have established your account. Look for the image below on your Mendeley Feed screen.
There are multiple ways to add references to your Mendeley library, including:
You can integrate references from your Mendeley library into your document in two ways: using the plug-in for Microsoft Word (which you can download from the Tools tab in the Mendeley desktop app) or sending references to your document from the Mendeley desktop app.
To create in-text citations in a document, follow these steps:
To create a bibliography of all your cited sources, follow these steps:
To create a standalone bibliography without in-text citations, follow these steps:
You can share references with others by creating a Mendeley group. To create a group, under the Groups section of the left pane in the Mendeley app, click Create Group.
There, you can name your group and determine your privacy level.
You can drag references from other folders within the Mendeley app to your new group. When you sync the Mendeley app with your online Mendeley account, other members of the group will be able to see references you've added/edited.