Congratulations and thank you to Godfred Darko!

Godfred is not only a fairly new Advisor, but a fairly new user of Mendeley. However, he has dived right into the role and impressed us with his energy. It’s not just the nearly two dozen workshops and seminars he has organized since becoming an Advisor two months ago, but Godfred has also arranged that Mendeley be taught this summer to all the incoming staff at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in Kumasi, Ghana, where he is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry.

Godfred started doing academic research in 1999, and has since completed both his Master of Science and PhD in Chemistry.

What were you using prior to Mendeley?

I was used to Endnote before I went to Rhodes University. I was taught to use RefWorks but I still clung to what I knew to use best – Endnote. I attempted switching to RefWorks only when my laptop crashed and didn’t have a license for Endnote. I heard about Mendeley my first time in 2011 when I went to Ghent University, Belgium.

Why did you decide to become an Advisor?

I learned Mendeley in my quest to help out a colleague who was having a challenge with the software. He had used Mendeley for his research in Manchester, UK. But when he returned to Ghana he couldn’t sync his desktop client with his online storage. To understand what his problem was, I installed Mendeley on my PC using my home internet. What fascinated me upon installing the software was its ease to use – my experience on other referencing managers could have been a factor, perhaps.

I demonstrated Mendeley to my research students and they were all very enthused about. I also demonstrated to a couple of colleagues and they invited me to teach their research groups. I signed up to become an advisor in February 2014, because I want as many researchers as possible to use Mendeley.

How does Mendeley influence your research?

Mendeley is very easy to use, gives an online backup and above all is free. It allows me collaborate with my peers and students and also search for papers, people and research groups of interest. Mendeley has placed me on top of my research.

How have you been spreading the word about Mendeley?

I have been holding free hand-on workshops, demonstrations and seminars on Mendeley. So far, I have organized about 20 of such meetings. Mendeley has been very supportive for such meetings and have been giving pens, memo pads, sticker notes and bags to participants as well as PowerPoint presenters to institutional officials who attend. 

What book are you reading at the moment and why?

My busy work schedules wouldn’t allow me to read a book outside the field of my expertise. I am currently leaning to play guitar so I have a couple of books on guitar scattered around my bed.

Any fun fact people might be surprised to learn about you?

I am a workaholic and it’s not funny!

What is the best part about being a researcher?

The best part of being a researcher is getting recognized. I get excited when my work gets published or is cited by others.

And the worst?

The worst experience is when your manuscript gets rejected by a journal. Rejection of a manuscript by a journal is very usual though in research cycle. It happened to me yesterday but with Mendeley I can re-format my reference with just a click to be submitted to another journal.

What is the one thing you want people to know about Mendeley?

Mendeley is an indispensable modern research tool.