Two months ago we launched the new look and feel for Mendeley newsfeed. The response has been really positive. Thank you for all of the survey responses and feedback —85% of you said you liked the new newsfeed so that was great news for us! We’ve been amazed at the great ideas and thoughts for what you’d like to see on the newsfeed – please keep them coming!

We’ve been squirrelled away at Mendeley HQ working on new ways for you to use the new feed to find new content and further your research.

What’s new
You can now comment on news items in your feed, so if you see someone has a new publication or has moved institution, you can congratulate them or ask them a question. Comments can be edited or deleted if you make an error, and you’ll see other people’s commenting on items in your newsfeed. We’ve also built ‘likes’ so if you’re too busy in the lab to write a detailed comment, you can show your appreciation with a single click.

You might also have noticed the brand shiny new bell in the top navigation bar that will tell you when your news is liked or commented on, or if you’ve made a comment and someone replies.

There have also been some changes in the content that appears in your newsfeeds. We’ve built a people recommender to help you discover interesting people to connect with on Mendeley.

We’ve decided to add these features because we know that building connections and collaborating with other researchers is a crucial part of your work. We want to bring relevant discussions and interactions directly into your newsfeeds so that you’re always the first to know what is happening in your field!

So what’s next?

Well, we’re working on ways to make the newsfeed easier to use if you’re new to Mendeley and also to fill it with even more interesting content. The number one requested feature in the survey was “updates when a document in my library is cited, highlighted or read” so that’s something we’ve pushed up the backlog… watch this space!

What this does also mean is that we’ll be bidding farewell to the old dashboard so if you try to access it you’ll be redirected to the new newsfeed. We know that some of you might miss some group updates — so do we! — but we’ve made all of our changes to newsfeed using a new technology which is more flexible for the future. Although it doesn’t yet integrate with groups, will mean that we can add other exciting updates such as the ones requested in the survey. We are of course keeping group updates on the backlog and will be returning to them in the future.

Let us know what you think!

We will keep you informed of changes here in our blog, but we’d love to hear your feedback. Comment below, or take our (quick) survey on newsfeed — your answers will help shape the future of Newsfeed.