Why choose Mendeley?

Looking for a reference management tool that is geared towards researchers in particular? Mendeley helps you keep track of the books, book chapters, journal articles or any other material you use in your research. It also offers a range of research functions not provided by other reference management tools.

Researchers sharing references and dataMendeley is suitable for use in all academic disciplines. See our Reference Management webpages – for an introduction and links to short videos on using Mendeley features.

Mendeley is:

Flexible and mobile

  • Mendeley offers lots of different ways to work with it including web, desktop and mobile interfaces
  • use Mendeley Desktop on a student PC or with Word or LibreOffice on your own laptop or
  • use Mendeley Web with Google Docs
  • your Mendeley libraries sync easily between devices.

Efficient and effective

  • the Mendeley Web Importer performs well compared with similar bookmarklets and works in all major web browsers
  • Mendeley has a built-in PDF viewer for ease of use
  • you can easily drag and drop documents complete with the necessary bibliographic data
  • the Mendeley Word citation plug-in installs/downloads automatically as part of the Mendeley Desktop download.

Communicative and collaborative

  • Mendeley is establishing itself as a growing academic community and helps you to expand your research network and connect with like-minded researchers
  • you can create public or private groups to discuss research
  • you can share resources securely via private groups
  • multiple users can annotate a document using personalised colours.

Unusually among reference management tools, Mendeley focuses on research dissemination and career progression. It:

Emphasizes and supports research

  • Mendeley offers a range of research functionality not provided by other reference management tools
  • search for and access open content uploaded by other users, including academic papers and datasets
  • view information about publication performance including citations, views and readers
  • set alerts for new resources relevant to your research area(s) and/or to receive suggestions for further reading
  • watch a folder to be alerted when new items are added by other researchers.

Encourages career development

Other reference management tools are available and each has its particular merits

  • Mendeley is free (up to 2GB) and works with multiple operating systems, as does Zotero
  • you can carry on using Mendeley when you leave Kent if you register with a personal email address and you don’t have to migrate your content (the same applies to Zotero).

More information on how Mendeley can help you reference your work

The Mendeley website – to discover more about what Mendeley can offer or to download the Mendeley Desktop or the Mendeley Web Importer.

During January we’re offering Mendeley introductory sessions, which include hands-on exploration of the software – book your place here. Also, the Student Learning Advisory Service (SLAS) are running referencing/study support drop-ins in the Library Café so come along and learn more.

2 responses to “Why choose Mendeley?

  1. Hi Andrew, many thanks for your comment, and apologies for the late reply, we’ve only just spotted it. I have passed your feedback to the Academic Integrity team in UELT and hope we’ll get a response from them. Many thanks and best wishes, Angela

  2. Hello,

    Not sure if this is even relevant, more of a warning for other students, but I thought I’d point out (as of 2021) that the “University of Kent – Harvard” reference style, per the “Mendeley Reference Manager”, does not adhere to the standards set per the University of Kent’s “Referencing Guide: The Harvard Referencing Style (updated Feb 2017)”, example below.

    (1) Journal article per Kent’s “Referencing Guide: The Harvard Referencing Style (updated Feb 2017)”, pg 19, “Single Author”:

    Jackson, D. B. (2003). Between-lake differences in the
    diet and provisioning behaviour of Black-throated Divers Gavia Arctica breeding in Scotland. Ibis, 145(1), 30-44.

    The same journal article per Mendeley “University of Kent – Harvard” referencing:

    (2) Jackson, D. B. (2003). Between-lake differences in the
    diet and provisioning behaviour of Black-throated Divers Gavia Arctica breeding in Scotland. Ibis 145: 30-44.

    Differences: All text formatting is the same, except for the “145” of the second example is bold. Other differences include: no comma between the publisher name and the volume number, no indication of issue number (should be in brackets) and the page numbers are separated from the volume(issue) with a colon instead of a comma.

    Hope this helps someone,

    Cheers

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