Reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s ugly duckling whose potential was not fully realized, so too is Mendeley in the world of citation management tools. Unlike some of its market-controlled counterparts, Mendeley is a powerful citation management resource with unique features that set it apart from the rest.
Mendeley offers users the following abilities:
- Importing references and whole documents from files/folders, EndNote, and RefWorks
- Importing items directly from a webpage using a unique bookmark affixed to a browser window
- Annotating and highlighting whole PDF documents in a Mendeley account
- Easily sort, refine, and edit records
- Cite while writing directly in Microsoft Word and create bibliographies of references used
- Newsfeeds, discussions, groups, and colleague connections to discover new research in a field of study
- Mobile access for iOS: Mendeley – Reference Manager (Lite)
Most of these features have been done before by way of EndNote and RefWorks, right? But do these tools allow users to set up groups with colleagues halfway round the world? Or share papers with other like-minded individuals and begin open discussions about the specifics of that paper or any given topic?
For those non-EndNote and –RefWorks users out there, the answer to these questions is no. Mendeley has the unique capability to act as both a discovery tool (for finding references on a topic) and a social network (by connecting, interacting with, and following other users and groups). To learn more about what Mendeley can do, register for an upcoming workshop and Breakaway with Mendeley.
As of yet, the power of Mendeley is seriously underestimated. It not only aggregates and organizes references, but it shares and disseminates them to the community at large, creating a dynamically crowd-sourced repository of records which contributes to the future of scholarly output. Just as the ugly duckling matured into a beautiful swan in the acclaimed story, Mendeley has great potential to become a forerunner in the future of reference management and collaboration.