Congratulations and thank you to Vicky Pyne!

Vicky recently participated in a video for our Women in STEM series (you can see these stories on our YouTube channel, including some of our own Mendeley employees), and we loved her passion for the topic, both as a medical student and someone with a decade of experience of working for technology companies.

Luckily for us, she has the same passion for Mendeley!

Vicky is in her final year of medical school at the University of Bristol. “My major research days are still ahead of me,” said Vicky, who has already done several projects throughout her university career, including looking at the efficacy of bariatric surgery, the aetiology and management of a rare obstetric condition called ‘Chronic Histiocytic Intervillositis,’ and a ‘big data’ study on the performance of mature medical students as they become mature junior doctors.

 

How long have you been on Mendeley?
Since my second year [of medical school] in 2011.

What were you using prior to Mendeley?
EndNote and the inbuilt MS Word References tool.

How does Mendeley influence your research?
Mendeley speeds up my research by allowing me to quickly save papers to a place where I can easily find them in the future.

It’s also made a huge difference in terms of creation of my references as well – this used to be such a headache and wasted a lot of time that could be have been spent doing more useful things to improve the quality of my work.

It’s a more subtle change but I think it’s also allowed me to review more papers simultaneously to truly integrate their messages into my own work in a way that just having the files stored on my hard-drive wouldn’t give me. Finally, I imagine its saved my printing costs as well as there’s no need to print and manually highlight stuff!

Why did you decide to become an Advisor?
When I first found the tool, it took almost no time to realise that this was going to be really useful. I thought it’d be good to be more involved in it and it’s nice to get the ‘Pro’ features for free!

How have you been spreading the word about Mendeley?
I share the link on the Facebook group for my year and always point it out to friends when our big yearly projects come around. I offer support to anyone who’s having problems – although they rarely need it!

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
I’m currently reading “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. For most of the academic year, I don’t get much chance to read for pleasure but I like to get into some books when the summer holidays come around.

Any fun fact people might be surprised to learn about you?
I started dancing at the age of 3 and almost went to stage school at the age of 11. I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if I’d gone down that route instead!

What is the best part about being a researcher?
You find yourself asking a question and you are able to go and find out the answer – sometimes it’s rather surprising and just creates a whole set of new questions. Learning and exploring is what life is all about!

And the worst?
It can be frustrating when you can’t access a paper you need as it’s behind a paywall – I understand that journals need to make money to survive but it feels there should be another way to do this that doesn’t hinder further research.

What is the one thing you want people to know about Mendeley?
That it just works. It’s simple to use and I can trust it completely. I’m not wasting time trying to learn a tool when I should be learning about my field of study.