The very nature of research means academics become experts in their fields. But what happens when they need services outside of their field of research, such as translations or artwork for their paper or book? They rely on author services, which are often delivered by other academics; For example, by PhD students that edit papers as a freelance job. Performing these services can not only be an way to earn some extra money, it also allows people to gain experience and grow skills in effective scholarly communication.
But academics and service providers often have difficulties finding each other directly and often depend on middlemen to get the work done. This means that services are more expensive than needed, and that people most of the time have no idea who actually performs the work.
Peerwith wants to change this. Launched in beta in October 2015, the platform brings academics directly in contact with experts to take their academic work to the next level, increasing transparency and making these services more affordable.
Academics don’t like creating another profile on yet another platform, so Peerwith wanted to integrate with a social network that is popular with clients as well as experts. Going for Mendeley integration was the obvious choice. What we have done so far is Mendeley authentication, which means that Mendeley users can sign-in using their Mendeley username and password. In the next few weeks, we hope to allow Mendeley users to import their full Mendeley profile, allowing users to showcase their full profile on Peerwith.
On Peerwith, clients can directly select the freelancer or supplier, assuring that the work will be done by the right expert with the right background and expertise. On Peerwith you can find experts in many areas, such as for editing and translations, artwork, statistics, to printing theses. Together clients and supplier determine the rates and terms of the project, and payment transactions are secure.
Based in Amsterdam, Peerwith was founded by Joris van Rossum, PhD and Ivo Verbeek, MSc, both with many years of experience in academic publishing, IT and product development.
We are excited with the integration with Mendeley, and warmly invite users to sign up when they need an expert to get their work to the next level, or if they want to offer their services as an expert. Simply sign-in with your Mendeley account!
Just over a month ago at the Mendeley Open Day, we launched Mendeley Data, and the number one requested feature has been to allow people to create and retrieve datasets via an API.
In the spirit of this festive season, we’re offering the community a gift – now you can use a REST API to create, manage, publish and find datasets. This means anyone can integrate it with their Apps and tools. In fact the Mendeley Data website is entirely powered by the API, which means that you have access to the same API capabilities that we use to develop our web app.
If you’re interested in working with datasets via our API, you can read our documentation here. If you’re new to the Mendeley API, you can get started by visiting our developer website, where you will find information about the API including authentication, documentation and examples.
But wait, we’ve got one more festive present for you! An early adopter of the Mendeley Data API is Hivebench. Hivebench is a digital lab notebook (DLN), which helps to plan and run experiments. Thanks to the Mendeley Data API, any data or observations can easily be shared to Mendeley Data from the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps.
This post can also be found on our Mendeley API blog feed – so head over there for more API news and updates
We’re excited to see what you will make with our API. If you have any questions, or have created something cool, let us know at api-support@mendeley.com or on Twitter.
Mendeley has a vision: to change the the way we do research, for all researchers!
Today’s guest blog post comes from Olayinka Fatoki, who works in Information Science at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. Olayinka tells us how she is sharing Mendeley with researchers and shares some of the feedback she’s received after her workshops.
In March 2014, I was in a training room during the TEEAL/AGORA workshop at the Kenneth Dike Library of the University of Ibadan, when I first heard of Mendeley. The facilitator took a group of researchers and librarians through a session on using the reference manager to organize citations and manage their references. I was fascinated by the power of this tool and the electrifying applause from the participants at the end of the session.
Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA) through partnerships with institutions in Nigeria organizes 3-day workshops which highlights Research4Life programmes, The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) and Reference Management software, Mendeley. As the Training and Outreach Officer for ITOCA in Nigeria, the responsibility of delivering training sessions on Mendeley soon fell on me and so I had to learn expressly and became conversant with the application. Mendeley is easy to learn and use especially with the different user guides available. At each of the TEEAL/AGORA workshops, with at least thirty-five participants, I have discovered more about Mendeley features and the saving grace it brings to researchers.
As a researcher myself, I use Mendeley for my work and have also organized training for PHD students, and lecturers in my faculty. Fifteen workshops and several training sessions down the line, I am always very happy to see the relief, excitement and brightened up faces after each Mendeley session.
TEEAL/AGORA Training-of-Trainers Workshop at the BABCOCK University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria which took place between 27-29 October, 2015
Some of the testimonies shared by participants at the end of different Mendeley training sessions are as follows:
“I think Mendeley is great. The fact that a search and reference tool like this exists beats my imagination. It’s great for research.”
“I have had Mendeley for six years but I have just discovered it is a unique program, that I am able to download and keep my download in it as a backup for my work is unique. It is an essential tool for me as a researcher.”
“Mendeley experience has opened a novel pathway for literature search, archiving and retrieval. Thus making research reporting easy and fun. Thanks to the MENDELEY TEAM!”
“Excellent tool for management of references. How I wish I could have been introduced to this immediately I enrolled for my postgraduate study. It will definitely help and boost my writing.”
“Mendeley is the best thing that happened to me in the world of referencing. I simply love it!”
It gets better when participants from these workshops send in exciting stories about how they have been sharing the knowledge about Mendeley with friends and colleagues. Gradually and steadily, as more and more researchers and librarians learn about Mendeley, the way we do research indeed is changing – Thanks to Mendeley!
By David Evans, Scientific Affairs Director at Reed Elsevier Properties SA
The fuel efficiency of our cars depends on the relative reactivity of the hydrocarbons in the fuel; in 2013 a PhD student published a paper describing a new material that can filter out the molecules that make our cars less efficient. A year later, a different PhD student published work that makes it possible to watch the tiny structures inside cells moving around in real-time, using a microscope.
Rising chemistry stars like these will be tomorrow’s leading scientists, developing solutions to many of the problems we face today. Recognizing their work and supporting their careers is vital, and that’s exactly what the Reaxys PhD Prize is for. The best known and respected of its kind, the Prize has attracted almost 2500 submissions from more than 400 universities in its six-year history.
Every year, 45 finalists are selected out of hundreds of submissions from chemistry PhD candidates and researchers who have recently been awarded their PhD, in a process managed by a review committee of renowned chemists. The finalists represent the world’s best young chemists, and their work is showcased at an annual Symposium.
Submissions are now open for the 2016 PhD Prize, and we’re preparing to see even more outstanding and impactful research this year.
Celebrating success
Imagine you’re just finishing your chemistry PhD and you’re standing at the foot of your career, wondering how you’ll be able to scale the mountain. You’ve done some really cutting-edge work already, but you have even bigger ideas. Now you need people to bounce them around with and a mentor to guide you.
The Reaxys PhD Prize gives exceptional young researchers a leg-up, helping them scale the difficult first part of their career and supporting them with lifetime benefits.
The two PhD students mentioned at the start of this article are previous PhD Prize winners and are now two of almost 300 members of an elite group – the Reaxys Prize Club. Each year the 45 new finalists are welcomed into the Prize Club, giving them the chance to network with some of the world’s best chemists.
The PhD Prize has been running since 2010, hence, Club members now hold a variety of positions in academia and industry, giving incoming members a great opportunity to find mentors and collaborators. Over 50 members are now in their first independent academic positions.
How it works
The 2016 PhD Prize is open to those who are in a chemistry PhD program or have completed their PhD after 1 January 2015, and who have published a peer-reviewed paper during their PhD. They apply online with their peer-reviewed paper, along with a CV (resume) and a letter of recommendation from their PhD supervisor.
Submissions are open until 8 February 2016, after this the review process will start, and once completed the review committee will select the 45 finalists. All 45 finalists automatically become members of the Reaxys Prize Club and a host of other benefits, including unlimited personal access to Reaxys and Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry and discounts on Elsevier Chemistry books and scientific conferences.
All the finalists are invited to attend the 2016 Reaxys PhD Prize Symposium. Before the symposium, the review committee will publish a shortlist of applicants. At the Symposium, all the finalists will present their research at a poster session, and the shortlisted candidates will give oral presentations. The three winners will be chosen after the oral presentations and will each be awarded a cheque for $2000.
Are you up for the challenge? We are looking forward to seeing the exciting new research being done by today’s rising stars and to welcoming a new wave of members to the Reaxys Prize Club.
To stay updated on the finalists, shortlisted candidates and the winners, visit the PhD Prize website.
In June 2015, Sir Tim Hunt was reviled for being perceived to be in favour of gender-segregated labs on the grounds that ‘girls’ cause men to fall in love with them, and cry when criticized. His comment, whether or not it reflected his actual opinion, cost the Nobel Prize winner his honorary professorship at UCL, and his position on the Royal Society’s Biological Sciences Awards Committee. More recently online, The Review argued that campaigning for women in STEM was unnecessary. Gender gaps in different professions, the editorial contends, can often be a matter of biology. Gender is a factor in determining why we study what we study, and blindly incentivizing students to pursue STEM subjects may distort the job market in the longer term.
But what we’re increasingly seeing is that failing to encourage women to pursue these careers can be equally damaging to the job market. In the short term the UK could find itself in the position of Australia, struggling to address the 600,000 strong STEM skills shortage. On a broader scale, a report released by the European Commission in 2013 estimated that if as many women as men worked in ICT, European GDP would be boosted annually by around €9 billion – therefore showing that failing to attract, and retain, women in this sector has negative consequences for the entire economy. In terms of the advancement of science, the research community could have missed out on the talents of Dr Sarah Noble, featured last week on the blog, Christina Richey, Planetary Science Division Program Officer at NASA, Liu Yang, pilot and astronaut who became the first Chinese woman in space, Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, selected as the next director general of CERN, Maryam Mirzakhani, who won the Fields medal in 2014, and so many more.
The science community might also have missed out on the work of Professor Lucy Carpenter, this year’s winner of the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, which was celebrated yesterday as part of the Royal Society’s Anniversary Day. Professor Carpenter specializes in atmospheric chemistry, studying the controls and mechanisms responsible for the release of a wide range of oceanic gases, many at concentrations around a trillionth of nitrogen and oxygen (hence named ‘trace gases’). This type of research is vital to understand the Earth’s atmosphere, how it affects our health and climate, and how our atmosphere responds to natural and human activities. Above all, Professor Lucy Carpenter was chosen for this award not only for the outstanding quality of her work, but also for her suitability as a role model and her project proposal to promote women in STEM.
What is certain, however, is that her meaningful work in learning about the structure of DNA was never publicly rewarded: she was beaten to the publication of her X-Ray photographs of DNA and work on the DNA structure in part because of her frictions with Maurice Wilkins. Later, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 was awarded jointly to Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”.
Photo 51: X-ray diffraction image of DNA obtained by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in 1952. The pattern triggered the idea that two strands of DNA ran in opposite directions, forming a helix.
Without doubt, this helps to highlight the importance of awards and schemes, such as those championed by the Royal Society, in supporting the development of female scientists, recognising their achievements and instilling them with the confidence to pursue lines of research that could lead to the next major scientific breakthrough.
After an amazing Mendeley and Beyond, Open Day 2015, we’ve just about managed to re-collect our thoughts and tell you how it went… It was wonderful! We really enjoyed meeting so many of our Advisors, Users, Librarians, Usability Testers, Partners and colleagues. A big thank you to everyone who joined us in our new home in AlphaBeta – we look forward to seeing you again next year!
Top Features announced at #MDOD15
Mendeley Data The new Mendeley Data repository is designed to help you do more with the data that comes out of your research, allowing you to publish your data, share it, and make it available for other researchers. This data platform allows researchers to upload the raw data from their research, where it is give it a unique identifier that makes that data citable. The aim is to move beyond the tradition research article and enable researchers to show their workings, and most importantly get credit for that.
Heliyon Submission Channel Mendeley is launching the first journal on it’s new submission channel. “Heliyon is the perfect journal to introduce this new pillar of Mendeley. It’s innovative in every sense, cross-discipline and, most importantly, open access” says Paul Foeckler, Co-founder and Integration Director of Mendeley. Our aim is to help people publish in a seamless way connecting relevant stages of their workflow and accelerate the process of making and disseminating new discoveries.
Mendeley Goes Social There have been several development in Mendeley recently. You may have noticed that your profile now features enhanced statistics information to provides any published author with an aggregated view on the performance of their articles. Additionally, you’ll be able to import your publications from Scopus, which has the highest-quality source of data on published articles, and for articles published on ScienceDirect we additionally provide information on views, search terms used to get to your article, map of where your readership comes from, and provides links to various source data providers.
Not only that (why stop there?!), you’ll be getting improved article suggestions, which will provide four different recommendation algorithms to support different scientific needs, which will be regularly recalculated and tailored, ensuring that there is always something new for you to discover.
But that’s not all that happened!
Breakout sessions In the afternoon, we held some smaller group breakout session where attendees had the opportunity to find out more and give there feedback about Mendeley data, BibTeX/LaTex, Data Science, the Mendeley API and – all the while being guided by some New Orleans-inspired Second liners.
Eye Art Our visitors also had the chance to have images their eyes turned in to some wonderful abstract art with some close up Eye Photography
Legendary Mendeley Open Day After-Party The amazing Jerome introduced us to his world of swing, right in the heart of Mendeley HQ – we danced, we sang, and we’re mesmerized as Jerome showed of his Charleston grooves.
You can catch up on Tweets through our Storify or see highlights on our Flickr
Mendeley has a vision: to make science more open and to broaden access to scientific content where it can make a real difference to people’s lives. This is particularly relevant to developing countries and is thus the motivation to our support of Research4Life.
TReND in Africa is an organisation that is also working hard to improve scientific literacy and capacity in the developing countries of Africa. Since 2011, they have been organising a range of workshops and summer schools across the continent in the aim of bringing efficient, effective and low-cost research resources to labs, building research infrastructure, and supporting the scientific development of Africa.
Overcoming global inequality through education and local empowerment are well established worldwide development goals, however, existing projects often focus on primary and secondary education. Investment in tertiary, university level education is a key foundation towards sustainable development in which future primary and secondary teachers are educated locally to the highest standards.
In addition, scientific education is pivotal to the ability of societies to sustainably develop, innovate, and integrate within the global society. Developing nations too often need to import their solutions, innovations and patents from abroad, while losing their most capable minds to universities abroad. Therefore we, TReND in Africa, believe that providing top-level education to local elites in their home country is key to enabling developing societies to take their futures into their own hands.
A 3-D printable micro-positioning device (“manipulator”) with an accuracy is in the order of 10s of microns.
In line with this, we run a wide range of educational activities, and support the establishment of top-level scientific facilities at several countries across the continent. We do this by leveraging large scale, low cost approaches to innovation and research – we make use of latest technologies and developments, ranging from free and open source software and hardware (FOSS / FOSH) approaches such as 3D printing, online teaching tools, and the use of the cost-effective yet powerful model organism, the fruit fly Drosophila.
The pipette works by creating an air-tight chamber below a membrane (e.g. a lab glove) pushed upon by a piston at the end of a biro-filling (hence “Biro”pette). The accuracy can be in the order of ~5 microliters for a “P200”.
One such course is our upcoming Bioinformatics Approaches for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Analysis at ICIPE, Nairobi (Kenya). The aim of this course is to introduce a range of bioinformatics analysis techniques for dealing with NGS data, including an introduction to programming and analysis best practices. The workshop will start with an introduction to programming, mainly focusing on the R statistical programming language, and will then build on this foundation to introduce tools for data visualisation and analysis. We will introduce software development concepts such as databases and version control, and move on to cover NGS analysis topics including de novo genome and transcriptome assembly, ChIP-seq and RNA-seq, rare variant calling and population genetics. As with all our courses. there will be a focus on using freely available data and open source technologies, and encouraging open reproducible research.
The “FlyPi” is an optical microscope designed for behavioural work with fruit flies, zebrafish or C. elegans
In addition to this, and to further support our students in their research careers, well will additionally cover subjects of science writing and science communication, covering the key topics from our previous Science Writing and Communication School in Zomba (Malawi) earlier this year that was run in partnership with the Training Centre in Communication. We are thankful to Mendeley for their sponsorship towards my (Dr Sarah Hoey‘s) travel to the course where I will teach on traditional science communication and introduce students to Mendeley as a free reference management and resource for colleague and international collaboration, as well as non-traditional science communication and how to talk to and engage with non-scientists about their research.
Basri recently came to visit us at Mendeley HQ in London and told us about his research investigating students’ perception of Mendeley in academic writing, and of his amazing plans to organise the Mendeley International Symposium in Education (MISE) in Makassar next year.
How did you get into your field and what is your research story? I get into my field in billiteracy development through the extensive reading and research over years and years. My current research on the Exploring Indonesian students’ perception on Mendeley reference management software in academic writing has been presented in the The 2nd International Conference on Information Technology, Computer, And Electrical Engineering (ICITACEE 2015) indexed by IEEExplore.
Where do you do your research/work the best? What kind of environment suits you? Doing research with the community development looking at the literacy program under the UNESCO Project on National Literacy Building for Timor Leste and the UNESCO program on education for all is an exciting work for the my latest work experience as a UNESCO consultant of education for all for Timor Leste.
How long have you been on Mendeley and what were you using prior to Mendeley and how does Mendeley influence your research? I have been on Mendeley for more than two years after experiencing using Endnote in my PhD work. Mendeley is a simple reference management software and easy to use in academic writing.
Why did you decide to become an Advisor and how are you involved with the program? Since experiencing Mendeley easy to use in the academic writing then I decided to incorporate Mendeley in writing article, research paper and other publication.
What academic/researcher/librarian would you like to work with or meet, dead or alive? Nancy Hornberger, a Professor in Pensylvania University, USA who pioneering the continua model of biliteracy.
What book are you reading at the moment and why? Language Ecology authored by Dr. Mark Garner, the Roehampton University since this book inspired my research on ecological perspective on language use in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
What is the best part about working in research? The best part of working in research is the way we find the most up to date, and futuristic topics, as well as finding the dynamic of the data in the field to put into a comprehensive output of the research.
And the worst/most challenging part about working in research? The most challenging part of research is working with the participants who are quite difficult to reach and communicate with for data collection.
What is the one thing you want people to know about Mendeley? One thing that I want people to know about Mendeley is the way Mendeley help authors in citing and referencing simultaneously as well as highlighting feature for easy revision.
In July, some of us Mendeleyans had the amazing privilege to fly over to Washington to visit the NASA HQ for the New Horizons Pluto Flyby. During our trip, we had the chance to meet some of NASA’s scientists, one of whom is planetary geologist and a program scientist Sarah Noble. Sarah’s specific interested are in space weathering on environments such as the Moon, Mercury, and asteroids.
We recently got in contact with Sarah again, to speak with her about being a women in planetary geology.
Who are you and what do you do?
I am a program scientist at NASA Headquarters. In my job I have two main hats to wear, grants management and mission work. I manage several Research and Analysis (R&A) programs for the planetary science division, making sure that we find and fund the best planetary research. I also serve as a program scientist on missions, like the recent LADEE mission to the Moon, and I’m currently the Deputy Program Scientist for our next Mars rover, Mars 2020. A program scientist serves as a sort of liaison between HQ and the science team, it’s our job to make sure that the mission actually produces good science. I also get to do a little science once in a while, my research is mostly working with Apollo samples to understand the effects of space weathering on the properties of lunar rocks and soils.
Is this what you wanted to be, when you were growing up? If not, what did you want to become?
I think I always knew that I would work for NASA, though as a kid, of course, I wanted to be an astronaut, didn’t every kid?
With Moon rock and the giant microscope I use to study it.
Doing a Q&A just before the LADEE launch.
What is your background and how did you get to where you are now?
I started my undergrad as an aerospace engineering major (because it was the only major with the word “space” in it), but quickly realized that I was much more interested in science than engineering. I switched to geology and fell in love with it, I also minored in both political science and art, because why not? I continued on the geology path in graduate school, specializing in planetary geology. After completing my PhD, I took a year or so off from science to scratch my political science itch and went to work for Congress. As an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, I worked as a committee staffer for the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology. Then I went back to science, in what I like to call my “NASA-nomad phase, where in the span of a few years I worked at NASA Johnson Space Center, then NASA HQ, then NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, then NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and finally back to NASA HQ.
Apart from being a lunar/planetary, what else are you/do you do?
In my spare time, I’m an artist. My day job tends to leak over into my art, most of my paintings are of the Moon and planets – they are so beautiful and amazing that I can’t help but paint them.
What are the best and worst parts about working in planetary geology?
In planetary science, we literally get to discover new worlds. Like NASA’s New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto this summer, giving us our very first pictures, and ESA’s Rosetta mission that has brought us incredible views of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. And every time, every new world, they are more amazing and incredible than we had imagined. But it’s a two-sided coin, space is hard, and vast, so our data is always limited. It took New Horizons nine and a half years to get to Pluto (and that’s just from launch, it doesn’t include the nearly three decades of work lobbying, planning, proposing, and building to get the mission off the ground), it will be a long time before we go back.
Is there a problem attracting girls/women to planetary science?
At the graduate school level, we are doing pretty well, about 40% of planetary grad students are women. Recruiting isn’t the problem, retaining is a bigger issue. Those numbers fall off precipitously among tenured faculty and senior researchers.
Me sporting #thatothershirt
With my Pluto painting
Have you had any role models or mentors in your field/during your career? If so, how did they support/encourage you?
My PhD advisor, Carle Pieters, was/is an amazing mentor. She was a women in planetary science back when there weren’t any women in planetary science. When I was her graduate student, her door was always open and whenever I would knock on it, no matter how busy she was (and believe me, she was always busy), she would give me her full attention. No phone calls, no quick glances at her computer, her full attention, which taught me that what I had to say was important and worthwhile.
Are there any particular challenges you’ve faced as a woman in STEM?
Imposter syndrome (the feeling that you are not as smart or qualified as those around you and that one day you will be found out) is something that I have struggled with. It turns out to be quite common among scientists, particularly female scientists, and actually I have found it to be very comforting and reassuring to realize that most of the people around me are struggling with the same feelings. One thing I try to remember to do when I mentor early career scientists is to talk about my failures, not just my successes, it’s important to realize that everybody fails sometimes and it’s not the end of the world. When we only talk about our successes it makes us appear superhuman, and that can be a tough standard to compare yourself to.
What has been your best experience, as a women in STEM?
I help run the Women in Planetary Sciences event at our annual meeting, the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. I used to attend those events when I was a graduate student and it would be maybe twenty people crammed into someone hotel room swapping war stories. Now we fill up the big ballroom, well over a hundred women (and a few men) gathering to support each other and offer advice. Every year as the women are gathering, I take a minute to look around, take in the scene, and remember how far we’ve come.
Women’s in Planetary Science Event 2012
Is there anything you wish you’d had, to support your career path?
My career path has not been a straight line, I have stepped away from doing research, first to work for Congress, then again at HQ, and I wish there had been more people telling me that that was okay, that getting a tenure-track faculty job wasn’t the only correct path, that I wasn’t “throwing away my science career”. I have no regrets about those decisions, they were the right ones for me, and I love my job. There are lots of ways to be a scientist, and all of them are valid career choices if you end up happy and fulfilled.
Which woman in STEM, dead or alive, do you most admire, and why?
I’m a big fan of Poppy Northcutt – She was the first women engineer to work in mission control and helped to design the return-to-Earth trajectory for Apollo 8. There’s a great picture of her in mission control, fashionably dressed, tousled blond hair, sitting in the midst of a sea of men in short-sleeved white shirts with ties and horn-rimmed glasses – the unofficial uniform of Apollo. One of these things is not like the others, clearly, and yet, everything about her body language and expression says she was right where she belonged, comfortable and confident. It’s hard to be the first, the only, and I love that she didn’t shy away from her “otherness”, didn’t buy herself a white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses.
What advice and encouragement can you offer to girls wanting to enter a career in STEM?
Follow your passion and your curiosity. Science is hard, but if you love it, it’s worth it.
What is your science/tech dream?
Part of me still wants to be an astronaut, or more to the point, I want to visit the Moon, do some field geology, see the Earth rise over the horizon.
If you are, or know, a women in STEM who would be interested in contributing to our Women in STEM blog series, then please email us! We’d love to here your story!
There’s an increasing drive in the scientific community to do more with the data that comes out of research. As funding bodies and governments begin to mandate that all research outcomes must be made available, researchers are looking for ways to publish their data, share it, and make it available for other researchers. The new Mendeley Data repository is designed to help them do exactly that.
“If you think about it, the output from scientific research hasn’t changed in the last 500 years or so,” said Joe Shell, Head of Research Data Management at Mendeley, “It’s always been about the research article, the meta of the experiment if you will, and takes the form of ‘we asked this question, here’s the answer’. What we want to do is enable researchers to show their working, and most importantly get credit for that.”
The platform allows researchers to upload the raw data from their research, and give it a unique identifier (a versioned DOI), making that research citable (please see our FAQs to find out what a DOI is, and how this works in Mendeley Data). For partnering journal websites (so far ScienceDirect, Cellpress, and others in future), the article links to the research dataset on Mendeley Data, enabling readers to quickly drill down from a research article to the underlying data; while the dataset also links to the article.
Researchers can also “privately” share their unpublished data with collaborators, and make available multiple versions of the data relating to a single research project, creating an evolving body of data. As science increasingly moves towards longitudinal studies, which involve repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time, this will be invaluable.
Mendeley Data has been developed in close collaboration with the research community, to ensure it addresses their needs. “Since we kicked off the project we’ve been having a few users come in every week to test it out,” Joe said. “We’re getting really good feedback on usability”. The Mendeley Data team has been working closely with Mendeley Advisors, and other scientists and publishers to ensure the product serves their needs.
In line with that, and the Mendeley ethos, Mendeley Data is a free service and datasets are licenced under a choice of open licences. Research datasets are permanently archived with DANS (Data Archive and Networking Services) based in the Netherlands. Further, all the features of the web App will be available via a publicly available API (Application Programming Interface) enabling other Apps to build on top of, and interface with, the research data repository. The API will be released in the next few weeks, and you can find out about it first by following the Mendeley API on Twitter.
We’re also proud to announce that Mendeley Data will be collaborating with the Hivebench Electronic Lab Notebook, in the aim of helping researchers to capture and archive data from their experiments, as they collect it in the lab, providing a truly end to end data management solution. This integration is a great example of how one can use the Mendeley Data API.
Do you collect, share or consume research data? We want to make something that serves your needs – we would be delighted to hear your feedback and ideas for Mendeley Data! Please follow the feedback button on the bottom of the Mendeley Data page, comment on this blog or write to support@mendeley.com.
Peerwith wants to change this. Launched in beta in October 2015, the platform brings academics directly in contact with experts to take their academic work to the next level, increasing transparency and making these services more affordable.
The new 
Mendeley Blog 