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Mendeley Citation Manager

How to set up and use the Mendeley Citation Manager

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is software, web service, and network that helps you find, organize, and use bibliographic references, like books and journal articles. It can help you collect, organize, and format references. You can store and organize PDF copies of articles, too.

Mendeley has a lot of great features, especially when you use both the web version (any platform) and the downloadable version (Windows, Mac, and Linux). You can import references directly from many databases and publisher websites. Mendeley can extract citation data from PDF's saved to a designated file. Mendeley can even organize and rename PDF's so that you can find them more easily. You can share folders (citations, not PDF's), either with other Mendeley users or with anyone.

There is also an MS Word plugin for Windows and Mac, and one for Open Office on Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you aren't using Word or Open Office, you can have Mendeley Desktop general citations and bibliographies that can be copied and pasted into your word processor.

The iPhone/iPad app allows you to organize and read your references, including downloading papers to read offline.

A Mendeley basic account is free, with a limit of 500MB of shared papers, 500MB of non-shared papers, no more than 5 collections shared with up to 10 users.

The Mendeley software is not available on campus lab computers. The software needs to be configured for your personal account, so it can't be used on a shared computer. However, the web features (collecting and organizing) are still available by logging into your account at Mendeley.com.

Note: Mendeley's Web Importer does not work in all of our databases. It works well in EBSCO databases, but not in Proquest, ScienceDirect, etc.

How Mendeley Can Help Your Research

What is a Citation Manager?

Mendeley is a bibliographic citation manager.

What does that mean?
A bibliographic citation is any reference to a book, journal article, video, or other source that you might use in an academic paper or article. EndNote Web allows you to 'manage' those citations by saving them, organizing them, and formating them.