Research is hard enough without having to deal with crappy software and programs that don’t talk to one another. Part of the problem is that many people who write great code aren’t scientists, so they don’t know what scientists need. We’d like to solve that problem, so we’ve teamed up with the Public Library of Science to issue a “Call for Apps“.

If you have a great idea for a scientific app but lack the coding skills to develop it, you’re in luck! Submit your app idea by August 10th (12pm PDT) and we’ll present it to developers who have the skills to make your dream a reality using the PLoS and Mendeley APIs, which are rich sources of data on scientific trends and stats.

Here are some ideas:

• Visualize research trends
• Mine PLoS articles for statistically relevant words or phrases using the Solr API or get paper stats from the article metrics API.
• Readermeter is an example of an app making good use of Mendeley’s readership data.

What’s the thing you wish someone would make an app for? We’ve got the data, you’ve got the idea, and chances are there’s someone who wants to bring your idea to life, if they only knew what you needed.

How To Submit Your App Idea:

• Complete the Binary Battle App Idea Submission form
• Leave a comment on this blog post with your ideas
• or just tweet your idea using the #binarybattle hashtag

If you’re a developer, you may wish to enter your completed app in the Binary Battle.

The Public Library of Science, the world’s largest Open Access publisher, has joined Mendeley in co-sponsoring the Binary Battle, the contest to build the best apps that make science more open using PLoS and Mendeley’s API’s. This brings the prize money to be won up to $16,000 plus other cool gifts and the opportunity to get your entries in front of a panel of influential judges from technology, media and science.

What is the Binary Battle?

The Mendeley & PLoS Binary Battle is a contest to build the coolest, most popular, and most useful application using Mendeley’s open database of over 90 million research papers, usage statistics, reader demographics, social tags, and related research recommendations or PLoS’s Search API which provides PLoS content for your desktop, web, or mobile application. You can find the full details on the Mendeley API Binary Battle page or read the announcement from PLoS. (more…)

Photo by Rémi Menegon

As the summer arrives, you may be thinking about taking some time off, maybe going to the beach to do something about that unhealthy pallor you acquired poring over the literature this past semester. Forget all that. Go buy some Vitamin D and come back inside, because I know exactly how you should spend the summer months. Geeking out with the Mendeley research data, that’s how! Mendeley has data on 85M research papers including who’s writing about what, who’s reading them, and where they’re being published. We want to give you $10001 for doing something really cool with all that data. The big announcement was back in March, applications have been rolling in, and now Amazon has chipped in free AWS credits for everyone taking part, with a big pot of credits for the winner.
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We at Mendeley have now built the world’s largest open research catalog, containing over 70 million documents. This is no small feat, considering we’ve only been at it for about 2 years, and we couldn’t have done it without you (nearly a million of you!).  By bringing control of research data back to the community, we hope to make research more collaborative, open, and efficient. If you’ve ever thought, “You know, I really wish I could search the literature better” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could see how this idea evolved over time?” or just “I wish I had $10,001 dollars”, well, now’s your chance. (more…)