Category: Mendeley Data

We’ve listened to our users and are refocusing on what’s important to them

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Concentrating our services on the tools that are providing the most value towards our users’ work – reference management, research data management and citation solutions. What does it mean for the Mendeley Community?

At Mendeley, we aim to help researchers work even more efficiently so they can spend their time making discoveries.

As Head of Reference Management Laura Thomson says:

“We want to take reference management off researchers’ minds by making all the tasks related to collecting, organizing, reading, annotating and citing as simple as possible.”

To ensure we are supporting researchers as effectively as we can, we regularly review what our users show us and tell us they need and value most.

Based on our evolving understanding of our customers’ needs, Mendeley is increasing its focus on its core reference management, research data management and citation tools.

In recent months, we have made many improvements:

  • The new Mendeley Reference Manager now features real-time sync of a user’s document library to the cloud, so that there’s no delay in seeing changes made to their library across all their devices.
  • We built a new citation add-in, Mendeley Cite, as a standalone extension for Microsoft Word so that it can additionally be used in the browser with Office 365 and with Word for iPad without the Mendeley Desktop app.
  • Our refreshed Mendeley Web Importer now leverages Mendeley’s catalog of open access links as well as industry partnerships such as GetFTR to help maximize convenient access to full texts and save researchers even more time in importing them to their libraries.
  • Mendeley Data has expanded coverage to more than 25 million datasets over 2000 data repositories, making researcher data even more findable and citable.

To focus on providing the best possible service and experience for the users of these tools, we will simplify Mendeley and retire the following features from December 2020:

  • Mendeley Feed and Public Groups
  • Mendeley Profiles
  • Mendeley Funding

Our customers can find out more about what this means for them on this page in our Support Center which we’ll be keeping regularly updated.

The new Mendeley Reference Manager is now available and we will continually improve the tool based the feedback of our users. Mendeley Desktop continues to be supported and we remain committed to our Mendeley Institutional Edition customers. Mendeley has always had open public APIs, and we maintain these as part of our commitment to interoperability, which is one of our four core principles, together with source neutrality, transparency and user control.

Mendeley exists because every researcher faces challenges with building their knowledge, being personally organized and efficiently preparing articles for submission. We continue our core mission of dedicated support to researchers in achieving these goals and intend to keep Mendeley available free of charge.

Mendeley has been helping researchers simplify their workflow and accelerate their research for many years now, and we look forward to continuing to do this for many years to come.

– Rose L’Huillier, EVP Researcher Products

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: Amy Neeser

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In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

Amy NeeserName: Amy Neeser

Job Title: Consulting and Outreach Lead at University California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)

Bio: Amy is a data librarian working in Research IT. She coordinates the consulting efforts across the Data Management and Research Computing programs to offer a holistic approach to data and computation. She also facilitates their community, partnership, and outreach programs. She previously worked as the Research Data Management Program Manager at UC Berkeley, as Data Curation Librarian at the University of Michigan, and as a science librarian at the University of Minnesota.

What motivates you each morning?

I am passionate about research. I love that I get to help enable world changing research by helping Berkeley faculty, students, and staff address the challenges and opportunities associated with research data and computing.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

There are two main things really. In terms of practicality, I would love to see RDM really focus on sensitive data needs. Currently this is often managed at an institutional level, but it would make a huge impact if there was a nationwide, or product-based solution that could address this. That would be huge.

Secondly, I think RDM is vital for reproducibility. Technologies like containers and Jupyter Notebooks enable users to share not only their data but also the software, versions, and specs to analyze it. As these types of technologies data management practices become more commonly used, it will be much easier to share and reproduce results!

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

I like how the different modules and features available can easily interact with each other. And it’s practical, supporting the data management process.

I feel that Mendeley Data Repository can help institutions address the reproducibility crisis, and it can save the need for institutions to create a repository at a local level.

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

I don’t think RDM can or should be “owned” by one unit or department, such as the library. It’s too big an area to be managed alone, and different players bring difference expertise and experience. It calls for a combined effort.

A lot of the questions that I get are in the active phase of the research lifecycle and often include sensitive data. IT can help with these issues, but also needs the library’s expertise around the beginning (planning, finding) and end (publishing, sharing, preserving) of the research lifecycle to provide researchers with a holistic approach to their scholarship.

More researchers from across domains use data and computational resources, and I think IT must be closely aligned with the library and other important players on campus such as the office of research.

 

Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: David Groenewegen

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In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

David GroenewegenName: David Groenewegen

Job Title: Director, Research, Monash University Library

Bio: David Groenewegen is the Director, Research. He is responsible for Library client services to the science, technology, engineering and medicine disciplines at Monash University, as well as the contribution the Library makes to the University’s research activity.

David has wide-ranging experience working in the areas of electronic information provision and related technology. Before returning to Monash University Library in 2013 he spent four years as a Director of the Australian National Data Service, where he was involved with the development and implementation of data management solutions across the Australian university sector.

What motivates you each morning?

The thing I most love doing is trying to find ways to help our researchers do their job better, which in the library means giving them the tools, training and resources they need, at the time they need it, and in ways that simplifies their life, not complicates it. I’ve been lucky to have the chance to try lots of new and cool things in my career, and I’m always looking for the next one.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

I want things to become frictionless. I’d like to see software that’s smart enough to understand the subtleties of where data is stored and create that connect with other software and processes throughout the researcher lifecycle. This would really help to overcome the messiness caused by having information all over the place.

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

One valuable thing that Mendeley Data is trying to address is how to bring data together, and manage it in a consistent end-to-end way. But for me, the modular aspect of Mendeley Data is the most exciting part. You’re not locked into one solution, instead you’re able to plug in different Mendeley Data modules into your own workflows – it’s the way universities like ours want to work

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

The need for RDM is well known, but there are still a lot of people struggling with finding the most frictionless way of doing things. Bespoke software might appear to be the best solution, but often this won’t work fantastically well, as integrating new processes into existing workflows isn’t easy. RDM isn’t as simple as storing data in a repository. I’m seeing growing recognition of the need to curate data and package it up for later use, so that others can get a decent answer out of it. Most of the tools currently available don’t support this very well.

Following on from this, long-term curation and management of shared data is also a key area I’d like to see develop. What was considered a lot of data 10 years ago isn’t now, but it’s not feasible to continue buying more storage so that we can keep everything just in case. Improving metadata goes a long way towards addressing this as it enables you to make quick decisions later on, but I’d like to see new processes developed that help us to identify if we no longer require to hold certain data.

 
Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.

Meet the Mendeley Data advisory board: Rebecca Koskela

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Sharing research data has the potential to make research more reproducible and efficient. When developing Mendeley Data – an ecosystem that enables data to be stored, shared and re-used – we worked with a board of librarians and research leaders from across the research data management community.

In this series of interviews, we meet some of the members of the Mendeley Data advisory board and get their thoughts on the role of research data management (RDM), and how Mendeley Data can contribute to this.

Rebecca KoskelaName: Rebecca Koskela

Job Title: Executive Director of DataONE at University of New Mexico

Bio: Rebecca Koskela is responsible for the day-to-day operation of DataONE—coordinating all technical, management, reporting, and budget issues.

Prior to her current position, Rebecca was the Life Sciences Informatics Manager for Alaska INBRE, and the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Core Manager for the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In addition to her bioinformatics experience, Rebecca has over 25 years’ of experience in high performance computing, including positions at Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Cray Research and Intel.

What motivates you each morning?

In addition to duties at DataONE, I’m a volunteer for other projects, such as EarthCube and Research Data Alliance, which are also concerned with research data management. The collaboration with these other projects moves them all forward.

What challenges do you want to see RDM fix?

There are two main challenges that I’d like to see addressed more quickly.
It’s great that more and more funding agencies are requiring data management plans, but I think we’re lagging in the development of tools to help people do the actual planning.

I also still see problems today around data discovery and the need for adequate documentations to re-use data. In 2010, we carried out a survey at DataONE which found that researchers had limited understandings of metadata standard. Unfortunately, even with the emphasis on FAIR data, we still have a long way to go to highlight the significance of metadata.

What excites you most about Mendeley Data?

The thing that stands out to me the most about Mendeley Data is that, contrary to what people may think, Elsevier doesn’t own the data – it remains in the control of the researcher. I love that.

Mendeley Data 5 factsI also really like the fact that users can pick and choose which modules they’d like to use. This means that you can get started somewhere, and have the option to expand into other RDM tools when it suits you, instead of having to start using everything from the offset.

What value does Mendeley Data bring to the space?

Mendeley Data is all about education – it helps people learn what is meant by RDM, and then provides the tools to do it.

I also like the fact that you can manage different metadata standards with Mendeley Data. It’s a good quality product built on strong coding.

What do you think the future holds for RDM?

I hope that people will pay attention to the need for quality metadata. I’d like to see better tools being developed that will speed up change here.
I also think that education needs to play at important part in RDM – it should go hand-in-hand with tool creation. I also want to see some success stories that show how added effort can really pay off.

 

Find out more about Mendeley Data here.

Meet other members of the Mendeley Data advisory board here.

 

Meet the team: Wouter Haak

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Name: Wouter Haak
Job title: VP Research Data Management

Wouter HaakWouter is responsible for research data management at Elsevier, specifically the Mendeley Data platform. This is an open ecosystem of researcher data tools: a data repository, an electronic lab notebook, a data search tool, and a data project management tool. Aside from his work for Elsevier, Wouter is part of several open data community initiatives; for example he co-chairs the RDA-WDS Scholix working group on data-article linking; he is part of the JISC Data2paper advisory board; and his group participates in the NIH Data Commons pilot project. It is all about the ‘R’ of FAIRdata: focusing on data re-use.

Prior to Elsevier, Wouter worked in online product and strategy roles. He has worked at eBay Classifieds, e.g. Marktplaats.nl, Kijiji.it – in roles varying from business development to overall responsibility for the classified’s businesses in Italy, France, Belgium and Turkey. Furthermore, he has worked for the Boston Consulting Group.

When did you join Mendeley?

2016

What do you love most about your job?

I love speaking to researchers, about their projects and visions. Going to universities and learning about the things they do, I’m proud that I can contribute a tiny piece to this amazing world.

What book did you most recently read?

I read the Cicero trilogy by Robert Harris. Amazing how something that takes place during the Roman empire is still actual today. The main character is not Cicero but his slave: Tiro. Tiro – quietly working in the background – is actually the hero of this story.

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

That Mendeley is becoming more than a reference manager. I would like to see Mendeley grow to becoming a daily virtual partner of researchers.

How would you explain your job to a stranger on a bus?

I help researchers and universities with re-using the data and measurements that they create better.

What’s the most exciting part of your job?

In my direct team of about 50 people, I find it exciting that we have more than 10 nationalities. I have lost count and that is fun.

What keeps you awake at night?

Nothing keeps me awake at night. Having gone through raising young kids, I have learned that problems are best tackled during the day.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned this week?

I learned that the European Open Science Cloud project is starting to have areas that are going to be very real and helpful for research overall. My plan is to see if we can contribute to this. Less so to the infrastructure but more likely on the ‘tools’ or ‘commons’ side.

Find out more about Mendeley Data

Find out more about all-things Mendeley

Effective research data management with Mendeley Data

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The science of tomorrow will require the data from today

All the information underpinning research articles offers value to other researchers: raw and processed data, protocols and methods, machine and environment settings, and scripts and algorithms. Sharing and using such research data can increase the impact, validity, reproducibility, efficiency, and transparency of research.

To unlock the true potential of research data, the Mendeley Data team believe that there is a need to move beyond solely making data available and find a dependable solution that enables data to be stored, shared and re-used. So we launched Mendeley Data. When collaborating with the research community to develop Mendeley Data, we followed four guiding data principles:

  1. Data needs to be discoverable
  2. Data needs to be comprehensible
  3. Researchers should be able to take ownership of their data
  4. Research data management (RDM) solutions need to be interoperable.

Discover more about the four principles for unlocking the full potential of research data.

Empowering researchers to perform research data management

Open science benefits research and society, and drives research performance. Here are five things you need to know about RDM with Mendeley Data:

  1. Mendeley Data supports the entire lifecycle of research data: modules are specifically designed to utilize data to its fullest potential, simplifying and enhancing current ways of working
  2. Researchers own and control their data: you can choose to keep data private, or publish it under one of 16 open data licenses
  3. Mendeley Data is an open system: modules are designed to be used together, as standalones, or combined with other RDM solutions
  4. Mendeley Data can increase the exposure and impact of research: Mendeley Data Search indexes over 10 million datasets from more than 35 repositories
  5. We actively participate in the open data community: we are currently working on more than 20 projects globally

View an infographic on the five facts

Mendeley Data 5 facts

Striving for superior data management for researchers

No one can solve RDM challenges alone, nor can one business unleash the full potential of research data sharing. However, through following core data principles, and continually evaluating and improving the RDM solutions built on our Mendeley Data platform, we hope to be able to contribute to supporting researchers discover the value of their data .

Get started with Mendeley Data.

Find out more about all-things Mendeley here. 

Mendeley’s vision for supporting researchers

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Gaby-Appleton-at-MendeleyGaby Appleton is the Managing Director for Mendeley and Researcher Products at Elsevier. She leads an expert product management team in a mission to support millions of researchers with better digital information systems. The aim is to help them have more impact with their work and effectively demonstrate that impact, to stay up to date, to organize and share their knowledge, and to advance their career. She brings over 15 years’ experience to her role along with a passion for the world of research. We met with her to discuss the development vision for Mendeley.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss the development vision for Mendeley. How would you define that vision?

Our vision for Mendeley and indeed for all the Elsevier solutions is to contribute to improving the information system that supports research — an ecosystem of tools and data that addresses real challenges in researchers’ daily reality.

What informs that vision?

Above all, it’s informed by conversations with researchers, which is something I spend a lot of time on. Not that it is a hardship! Spending time with them is truly one of the highlights of my job. Hearing about ground-breaking research from people who are so enthusiastic about what they’re doing is inspirational.

But it’s also essential. The Mendeley team that is responsible for defining our vision needs that open, honest contact with researchers.

Why are those conversations so important?

Because our development strategy has to focus on the problems we can solve for users. If we were doing something because it was exciting technologically but it didn’t address real challenges, then we’d be completely missing the point. We need to ground our development in researchers’ needs.

That’s why we start by listening to gain insight into their challenges, then look at what the technology can do, and finally design solutions to those challenges.

What is the vision for Mendeley’s development that has come out of conversations with researchers?

Based on all the challenges researchers have talked about, we’ve adopted four principles to guide our development strategy: source neutrality, interoperability, transparency, and user control.

Source neutrality means that researchers can use this information system to retrieve, store and disseminate information regardless of the publisher. An unbiased view is the essence of good research and we want to ensure that our platforms and tools are open to content beyond Elsevier’s. Mendeley users can receive recommendations on what to read next (Mendeley Suggest) based on what they’ve already added to their library, and funders-imagethese recommendations are not limited to Elsevier – they can be from any publisher. And we don’t restrict that to papers. Researchers have talked about challenges with staying abreast of funding opportunities, so we’ve worked to provide one of the largest aggregations of funding information, maintaining source neutrality and transparency. The same applies to career postings.

Interoperability is about ensuring that applications, tools and data sets from different providers can work together. The Mendeley API represents our commitment to interoperability with any tools that researchers need.

Transparency is vital to researchers. If they receive an alert or recommendation, they need to know what prompted it. Otherwise, they can’t know if it’s relevant without spending time assessing it. If they are looking at search results, it’s great if they can see how their search string relates to those results. That helps with filtering and refining the hit set. An example of how we maintain transparency is in the functioning of Mendeley Suggest. It makes recommendations for further reading based on what a user and their colleagues are reading, but crucially, it includes information about why that article is relevant.

Control is all about giving researchers control of their own data, where it’s shared and how it’s used by the system. If they don’t want their data to be visible beyond a select group of users, or they don’t want their behavior to provoke recommendations, they should be able to opt out of those features. User control is all about making it easy for an individual to find the settings for preferences. A good example in our system is Mendeley Data, which makes it easy for users to define exactly who sees their data. Similarly, the organization, privacy and recommendation settings of researchers’ reference manager library are easy to control. What displays in a Mendeley Profile is entirely at the user’s discretion.

That’s where our development team constantly strives to take Mendeley: to keep it open to content from any source; to make sure its application programming interface is compatible with multiple tools and platforms; to give users insight into how its features make recommendations; and to ensure that it’s easy for users to set their preferences.

You’re currently developing a new reference manager, now available in BETA, which is a completely re-platformed and updated version of Mendeley’s core reference management function. How does it align with this vision for Mendeley?

I’ll leave it to my colleague Laura Thomson, our Head of Reference Management, to talk about the new Mendeley Reference Manager in more detail in her upcoming interview. Briefly, reference management tools are what we’re best known for. Mendeley Desktop is now ten years old and, while it’s developed incrementally over that time, to really act on users’ feedback and make some big improvements, we felt we needed to take a new RNS_963_a.General version image (2)approach and take advantage of new technologies that have become available since the original Mendeley Desktop was built.

The new Mendeley Reference Manager remains free-to-use and publisher agnostic. The Mendeley API remains open, allowing researchers and developers to create interoperability with multiple tools. We’ve ensured that the settings for the library, recommendations and so on are transparent and in researchers’ control. It’s unique in satisfying those four aspects of the vision for an information system supporting research.

Every aspect of Mendeley follows the same principles and is informed by real-world conversations: from reference management through data sharing to showcasing impact.

We would never pretend that we have all the answers, but we listen. We’ll continue to communicate with researchers as we work on each application of Mendeley. Our goal at Elsevier is an information system that supports research, and Mendeley aims to remain a core part of that.

Thank you very much for your time.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Find out more about all-things Mendeley here

Find out more about the information system supporting research here 

Store, Share and Find: Manage It All with Mendeley Data

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Mendeley answers NEWYou recently learned about how Elsevier’s Mendeley Research Network can help you stay updated on the latest trends and developments in your field. But there’s another tool within Mendeley that can give you peace of mind about the data you’ve already generated in your research. Mendeley Data  is a free, secure cloud-based repository where you can store, share and find data, wherever you are. A vital part of the unified Mendeley ecosystem, Mendeley Data enables you to check if there is data out there for a new project that you are working on, as well as to execute your funding mandate and data management plans without so much time-consuming administrative overheads.

Seek and You Shall Find

When you start a new project, or apply for funding, you always check the latest research on your chosen topic and look into what has been done already previously. Why don’t you take a look at existing data on a topic as well? With Mendeley Data Search you can find related data easily, and with  over nine million datasets from over 30 repositories worldwide indexed, that’s a wealth of information readily available for you to easily preview relevant data to support  your project.  Your funder will also be impressed if you show that you’ve taken the time to ensure that you’re not duplicating efforts.

Get Credit for Sharing Your Data

An open science repository, Mendeley Data allows you to quickly and easily upload files of any type – with as many as 10GB per dataset. You can import your own folder structure, and your data is automatically tagged with subject classifications. Mendeley Data has received the widely recognized CoreTrustSeal certification, so you can be confident that your data always will be safe and accessible. Plus, your data is archived for as long as you need it by Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), the Netherlands-based institute for permanent access to digital research resources. Best of all, you retain complete control and copyright over the data, and choose the terms under which others may consume and reuse it.

Mendeley Data also supports versioning – making longitudinal studies easier to manage. All published versions of a dataset can be viewed and compared by clicking on the links in “Version” history.

There’s a vetting process to store data in Mendeley; each collection of research data files is checked by a qualified reviewer, to ensure the content constitutes research data, is scientific in nature, and doesn’t solely contain a previously published research article. Datasets also may not contain executable files or archives that are unaccompanied by individually detailed file descriptions; copyrighted content (audio, video, images) to which you do not own the copyright; or sensitive information (such as HIPPA-protected patient details or birthdates).

Could the process be any more painless?

>             Register/log in to Mendeley Data.
>             Click “New dataset.”
>             Upload data files.
>             Add metadata (including Title, Description and Contributors) for the                                          dataset.
>             Save
>             Hit “Publish.” (only when you’re absolutely ready for it to go public).

Each researcher’s dataset is discoverable, because it’s deeply-indexed in Mendeley Data’s powerful search engine. In addition, it is marked with the standard schema.org metadata markup language.

Datasets in Mendeley Data are viewed and downloaded frequently – on average once per month. As a result, we see that articles having accompanying datasets get cited more often.
Every dataset in Mendeley has a unique and permanent DataCite DOI(digital object identifier) which makes it much simpler for you, or other researchers, to locate and reference your data. When you publish your research, you can connect your paper to the cited dataset via the DOI and it will be indexed in OpenAIRE, the EU initiative aimed at improving the discovery and reuse of research publications and data.

Share Your Data – Or Not

When you use Mendeley Data, you control who gets to use your data and when. You have the option to securely share your data with colleagues and co-authors before publication, or publish your data to the world when you’re ready to do so.

With many Elsevier journals, it’s possible to upload and store your dataset to Mendeley Data during the manuscript submission process. You can also send your data directly to the repository. In each case, your data can be linked to any associated journal article on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, making it easy for readers to find and reuse.

Mendeley Data benefits not only you, but your institution. By saving time in searching, collecting and sharing data, it prevents re-work. Mendeley showcases institutional research outputs, boosting your reputation as well as that of your employer. With quick access to so much data, institutions are able to improve collaborations internally and externally.

Let Mendeley Manage What You Generate

It’s time to get more credit for your data. Mendeley Data has the power to make this happen – enabling  your data to be citable, accessible and discoverable with  optimal data management, so you can focus on your research. Isn’t that what really matters?

Get started with Mendeley Data

 

 

Mendeley Data: Introducing Folders

Christian DeFeo

We’ve introduced Folders to make organising your data easier.

At Mendeley Data, the open research data repository, we’ve just launched folders to help every dataset author group and logically organise their research data files into folders, in the same way they would organise files on their computer.

“It would be great if a folder structure would be applicable for datasets. For example, I would like to share data from a method comparison study. One folder for each dataset within this comparison would be most convenient.”

 

A folders feature was requested by our users via survey results and feedback. We will continue to listen to researchers in order to improve our service and add features most relevant to our end users.

Authors are able to drag and drop to either create subfolders, or change the order of the folders, with any data files outside the folder structure ordered alphabetically. Click ‘Create Folder’ to start organising your files.

The process of uploading data, with the ability to click or drop any file type, will remain the same. For those datasets that are already published, the ordering of files will not change. However, for those datasets which are in draft form or if another version is subsequently created, all ordering of data files uploaded will change to an alphabetical ordering system rather than the one the dataset author had previously set.

Mendeley Data: Now Available via OpenAIRE

Christian DeFeo

OpenAIRE is a network of repositories, archives and journals that support Open Access policies. OpenAIRE is a Horizon 2020 project, aimed at supporting the implementation of EC and ERC Open Access policies; open access to scientific peer reviewed publications is obligatory for all Horizon 2020 funded projects. The goal is to make as much European funded research output as possible, available to all, via the OpenAIRE portal.

Every dataset published in Mendeley Data, which has an associated article or project, now becomes automatically aggregated to the OpenAIRE portal, where it can be found alongside other research. This enables researchers to discover research data from a wide range of repositories in one place. This means Mendeley Data is part of a global collaborative discourse promoting open science. With the availability of entire research projects and associated data, data reuse is supported, accelerating the pace of research.