Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.  For existing users, you can get it by starting (or restarting) Mendeley Desktop and accepting the update prompt.

Highlights of this release:

• The new citation editor introduced for Word on Windows in the previous release is now also available for users of  OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word for Mac.  There is no longer a need to go back to Mendeley to select a publication to cite.  Instead you can just click Insert Citation (or press Ctrl + Cmd (⌘) + I on Mac) and type in keywords from the title, authors or publication of the work you wish to cite.





• You can now export the sticky notes on a PDF as an annotation report in PDF format, with or without the content of the article itself.  When viewing a PDF in Mendeley, go to File -> Export PDF with Annotations.



• Sharing PDFs with colleagues is now easier, whether they use Mendeley or not.  Select a document and click the ‘E-mail Documents’ button on the toolbar to send an article via email to one or more people.

In addition, there have been improvements to app startup time, citation formatting, RIS import, EndNote XML import/export and Linux desktop integration, plus bug fixes and stability improvements.

For more details, see the complete list of changes.

If you have a feature, change or bug fix that you particularly want to see soon, please visit our feedback forum and add your votes.

Ubuntu users: Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 was released for Ubuntu/Debian last week.  Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9.1 has been released today to fix crashes specific to the Ubuntu version that some users encountered when the file organizer was enabled.

Upload Space

When we first cleared out some room on our servers to allow you to upload PDFs to your private Mendeley Web account, we spared 500 MB per person, given that PDFs are usually around 1-2 MB, this  enables you to store 250-500 PDF documents online. In response to requests (or should we say popular demand?) as well as bulging research collections, we will increase the storage space as part of a premium package in early 2010 (we are also working on more detailed stats, a recommendation engine and some other nice features).

For the growing number of people who really can’t wait that long (hats off to those of you who have already maxed out your accounts!), please write to support@mendeley.com with a request for extra space and we’ll be happy to pass out some freebies. It will be a temporary upgrade but you won’t have to switch to a premium subscription later. Once the premium features are in place and if you choose not to upgrade, you won’t be able to add any further documents to your web account (if it is larger than 500 MB), but your data will still be accessible and safe.

Shared Collections

Taking a similar approach with shared collections – which are currently limited to ten people – we quickly found requests rolling in for collections of a much larger size, mainly for departments and labs. So, we will raise the number of people who can access a shared collection as part of a premium package and in turn make the limits flexible. Again, write to support@mendeley.com if you need more shared collection slots within your department, lab, or research group. Send us your username (e-mail address), the name of the collection, and the number of people you would like to collaborate with and we can expand your shared collection to make it a bit more sociable for the festive season.

(Image by CwThomas43)