Science Online London 2010 call for sponsors

Are you working for a company or institution in the field of science, or do you want to reach the thought leaders in science online? We are looking for sponsorship partners for our Science Online London 2010 conference on 3-4 September (Fri/Sat) at the British Library in St Pancras, London. Last year, our sponsors included institutions and companies like the Royal Institution of Great Britain, CrossRef, NESTA, AAAS/Science, and BioData.

As a sponsor, you will gain exposure to key scientific bloggers, communicators and thought leaders. Given the nature of the audience, we anticipate plenty of media coverage and ‘buzz’ through social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed and blogs. The conference is a golden opportunity to demonstrate that your company is a supporter of such tools for scientific communication, and a chance to promote your brands, products and services to an audience of passionate communicators.

If you would like to participate as a sponsor of Science Online London 2010 please contact Lou Woodley (l.woodley@nature.com).

Co-hosted by:

Ian Mulvany is joining Mendeley!

We’re delighted to announce a brilliant addition to Team Mendeley – Ian Mulvany! At Nature Publishing Group, Ian was the product manager responsible for both Connotea (Nature’s social bookmarking service) and Nature Network (an academic social network/blogging platform). We had bumped into Ian at various events and conferences, and each time, we were excited and inspired by his thoughts about the future of scientific collaboration, communication, and publishing. It got to the point that we simply couldn’t resist trying to get him on our team – and I’m extremely happy to say we succeeded: Next Monday, Ian will become our VP of New Product Development! Hell yes.

So, over to Ian:

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At the heart of the academic literature are conversations about how we understand the world.  The content and context of what researchers in the academy do is fundamentally important in constructing what it is to be human. The advent of a deeply interconnected world, and the growth of academic output has, unsurprisingly, led to a situation where it becomes difficult to get a clear understanding, or even a clear picture, of the diversity of what we know about the world. Though advances in communication have led us to this place of over-saturation, tools that help us manage and work our way through all of the information available to us have been slow to emerge.

Mendeley has made real progress in creating tools that can help researchers both manage, and make sense of what is going on in the literature. When I was approached by Jan, Victor and Paul I was impressed by what they had achieved so far, and even more impressed by what their future plans are. They have assembled an amazing team, and I see a great opportunity to work with them to make a positive impact on the daily life of people working with academic literature.

In my career to date I have worked for scientific publishers, first at Springer, and then at Nature Publishing Group. I’ve been fortunate to work closely with communities of scientists, to work with great people in the publishing industry, and to help build some pretty interesting things. A consideration, though, has often been on trying to understand how these tools can fit within the framework of existing publishing business models.

By moving to a start-up company, focussed on just doing one thing, and doing it really well, I see a chance to work on rapidly producing tools that innovate not only in what they offer, but also in the business models that support them. Those are some of the reasons (did I mention the amazing team already?) that I’m absolutely delighted that I will be joining Mendeley full time from Monday the the 28th of June.

Mendeley Desktop v0.9.7 Released

If you have opened Mendeley Desktop since yesterday, you will have noticed that we have a new major release available and ready for auto-update.

Among the new features and improvements we would like to mention the re-designed Document Details pane on the right-hand side.

Mendeley PDF and side pane document details

Also new to this release is the ability to upgrade your Mendeley account. By upgrading your current free account (which will always be free!) to one of our premium options, you have access to more Web space for your personal and shared collections and the possibility to collaborate with larger groups.

Mendeley upgrade plans

Overall, there have been a lot of improvements made both on the interface and functional level with clearer dialogs and information display. For our Mac users, there have been quite a few UI improvements too and the Cmd+H shortcut properly hides the window!

This release includes a few bug fixes, improvements on existing features such as faster syncing and better sticky notes, and introduces some important new features. The release notes can be seen here.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support.

Become a Mendeley University Advisor

Mendeley University Advisors are part of our award-winning and amazing project that will make researchers’, scientists’ and students’ working lives happier by creating the Last.fm for research and by organizing the world’s academic research.

We want to invite YOU to be part of Mendeley by becoming a Mendeley University Advisor!

If you are a power user and are enthusiastic about Mendeley and what we want to achieve and you’d like to spread the word about us at your university – while receiving some great benefits along the way – now’s your chance!

We’re recruiting a select group of Mendeley University Advisors to be the official Mendeley representative at your university and to help us keep in touch with Mendeley’s growing userbase at your university.

What you’d do:

Spread the word about Mendeley in your university in any way that you’re comfortable with. Some things our current advisors at universities like Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton do are:

  • Putting up posters
  • Giving presentations or demos, to classes and 1 on 1
  • Conducting teaching sessions
  • Forming local user communities
  • Introducing Mendeley at university libraries
  • Talking to friends and colleagues about Mendeley
  • or any other good ideas you might have!

Basically, you’re going to be our number one contact person at your university and the official Mendeley representative at your university. You’ll also help us better understand the needs of users, labs or departments at your institution, so we can keep improving Mendeley.

Some of the benefits:

Fame, glory, and you get to:

  • Be a part of the new way research is done – we want to make science and research more open and awesome!
  • Become the official Mendeley representative at your university, institution, or organization.
  • Get Mendeley’s premium features free of charge.
  • Get the opportunity to travel to another university or host a Mendeley presentation out of town.
  • Get to know our team and other Advisors from around the world and make important contacts.
  • Be the first to learn about what’s going on at Mendeley.
  • Get access to new features before others do.
  • Get access to our Mendeley advisor forum.
  • Have pizza and free drinks on Mendeley when you give a demo or talk at your institution.
  • Loads of free Mendeley swag (stuff like t-shirts, pens, stickers, etc.)!
  • Last but not least: Get a shiny advisor badge on your Mendeley profile (if you like)!

If you have any further questions, contact us at community@mendeley.com, or get in touch directly with our community liaisons, William or Ricardo.

William Gunn, PhD

Open Science Advocate, Assay Development Consultant and co-founder of Stemcellassays.com
Twitter: @mrgunn
Community Liaison, Mendeley
San Diego, California, United States
Research field: Biological Sciences – Cellular Biology
Adult Stem Cell Research, Bone Biology, Statistical Analysis, Cancer, single molecule analytical techniques


Ricardo Vidal, M. Eng.

Ph.D. Candidate, Queen’s University
Twitter: @rvidal
Community Liaison, Mendeley
Kingston, Canada
Research field: Biological Sciences – Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics, Synthetic Biology, Stem cells, Oncology

Ready to go? Click here go to our Advisor signup page and join today!

Science Online London 2010: Registration and Wiki

The registration for the Science Online London 2010 is now open!

There are only 95 days left until the conference starts in early September, so hurry up and grab your ticket from our registration website!

We are all very excited and looking forward to seeing you in London at the British Library!

Wiki page

We are organizing an action packed conference and we want your input to help shape the sessions. To this end, we have added a Wiki to the Science Online London website. Please use the Wiki to give us your suggestions and we will be looking at them continuously and integrate as many of them as possible.

For more information please visit the Science Online London 2010 website or directly go to the Wiki page.

And don’t forget to register at our registration website!

Co-hosted by:

Contact us:

Sponsor the conference:
Potential sponsors should contact Lou Woodley (l.woodley@nature.com).

General enquiries:
For general enquiries, please contact Sebastian Arcq (sebastian.arcq@mendeley.com).

: Follow @soloconf, hashtag #solo10

: Discuss in the Nature Network Forum

: Discuss in the Solo10 FriendFeed Room