Category: research tutorials

Tips and tricks using Mendeley. Infos related to getting started with Mendeley and explore all available features.

Mendeley Bootcamp for German-speaking researchers

Jonathan Beyer

MENDELEY BOOTCAMP 2016

All scientists have one thing in common: The passion for our research. But growing requirements require fast and efficient cooperation, access to literature from anywhere, timely synchronization of laboratory results and to be in contact with other researchers worldwide. That sounds like a challenge, right? No more! With Mendeley you can easily optimize your everyday work and devote your time what actually really matters: your research.

Developed by scientists for scientists, Mendeley connects you worldwide with 6+ million users.

Join Mendeley Bootcamp 2016 for German speaking. An exclusive webinar series aimed to German speaking researchers focused on how Mendeley can help you manage your references, understand the impact of your research and showcase your work.

The webinar series will cover the use of Mendeley as:

* A powerful Reference Management Tool to Store, read, annotate and cite literature both individually and collaboratively anywhere on any device.

* A Scholarly Collaboration Network with a global community of 6+ mill researchers across all scientific disciplines to connect, collaborate and showcase their work.

* A personal analytics dashboard enabling researchers to evaluate the performance and societal impact of their publications via a concise and comprehensive collection of key performance metrics.

* A discovery tool with personalised Recommenders, Alerts, and media updates, enabling researchers to stay up to date in their fields.

* A data repository to securely store datasets online so they can be cited and shared.

BOOTCAMP SCHEDULE

Screen Shot 2016-10-07 at 12.39.11.png

Register now!
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/RR7VP8G

Mendeley's top time-saver tips for early career researchers.

drgunn1 Comment

So you’ve slaved away all year long, passing up pool party and barbecue invitations to feed the needs of the research beast, and you’ve finally got something to show for it. The next question is how do you get it published, where, and what do you do after that so it doesn’t end up with two readers, one of which is your mom? We won’t presume to tell you where, but we do have a few tips for things to consider, which you may have missed because you were slaving away at the bench or in the library like a good student and not reading up on all the cool stuff that’s happened this summer in the exciting world of academic publishing. So here’s our summary of the new (and we presume you’ve already heard the old from your PI).Read More »

HOWTO: edit citation styles for use in Mendeley

Steve Ridout67 Comments

[Editor’s Note–We thought you’d like to know: this 2011 post is a bit dated. Find current info on Mendeley’s citation abilities here, and details about editing citation styles in the Mendeley Guides.]

Mendeley uses the Citation Style Language v1.0 to format citations and bibliographies in our Word and OpenOffice plugins. Although we provide styles for 1000+ journals, we realize this isn’t enough for everyone. If you need to customize a citation style and are not scared of editing a little XML (it’s actually not that difficult), read on…Read More »

Check out academic lectures on Seminar Streams

drgunn

Seminar streams is a new service that hosts open access lectures and academic talks. They’ve already got some great academic content such as this talk about membrane protein assembly and this one about the inflammation-cancer link via NF-kappa B and HIF. We think open access academic video content is a great addition to what’s available online, joining such efforts as the Journal of Visualized Experiments.

One thing I’d like to see more of from Seminar Streams is a clear indication of which content is available for re-use. Flickr does a good job of this.

Managing your research the modern way: search as an interface to your research

drgunn4 Comments

connected graphThis post is the second in a series, looking back over the changes in information management over the past decade. Three major and interrelated developments are the move to querying databases of information as opposed to loading information from individual files, the practice of tagging bits of information as opposed to filing things in a hierarchical folder structure, and the representation of information as a temporal stream as opposed to a static page. This post is about the move to databases from filing systems, and how that improves your workflow.Read More »

Managing your library the modern way with tags and filters.

drgunn11 Comments

delicious-logoAs the year gets to the end, everyone writes “Best of” lists for the past year. I thought I would do something similar, but since we’re at the end of not only a year, but a decade, it’s worthwhile to reflect on the changes in how people manage and organize their increasingly digital stores of information. Over the next week, I’ll highlight some major developments and discuss how they’ve informed the development of Mendeley. This week it’s the practice of tagging bits of information as opposed to filing things in a hierarchical folder structure, with posts on the move to querying databases of information as opposed to loading information from individual files and the representation of information as a temporal stream as opposed to a static page to come next week.Read More »

Mendeley Webinars take us around the globe

Mendeley4 Comments

Webinar ScreenshotLast week we hosted two Webinars for scientists and information professionals from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an international network of research institutions as well as governmental and non-governmental organizations. CGIAR is aiming to achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries using scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and the environment. We are always pleased to find out about new areas of research, and to see that many people are already using Mendeley. Over at CGIAR’s ICT and Knowledge Management Department, Mendeley is widely considered to be an “intuitive, easy-to-use tool for online reference management” – Thanks, Meena!

So how global is global, then? Looking at the attendees of last week’s webinars: very, very global! Mendeley is being used in so many diverse locations – there were CGIAR researchers, librarians, and knowledge management specialists from Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, the UK and the USA. And it’s great to see that we can help to make research easier.

We are planning to offer more webinars very soon. If you or your organization is interested in a tailor-made web seminar, please let us know at community@mendeley.com.

Mendeley’s one-click web importer

Ricardo Vidal15 Comments

As a long-time Mendeley user, I can say that one of the features that I happen to really enjoy using is the one-click web importer. It was not available when I started using Mendeley to organize my references but when it was implemented, it made my work so much easier.

When starting work on a new project, there is normally an initial phase of your work-flow that consists of performing searches on websites for available literature on the desired topic.

You query the search sites with keywords, open each link that seems of interest, read the abstract and when available download the paper (PDF document). If you happen to be searching on many sites and downloading many papers, this can be a bit repetitive.

Repetitive work is normally tedious and time is usually short. So, what if you could easily download references and their respective PDF documents (when accessible) with a simple click of the mouse?

Mendeley’s one-click web importer enables you to add references (and their PDF documents) to your Mendeley reference library from within your favorite browser. All you need to do is add the web bookmarklet to your browser bar and you will be able to easily add documents to your library from a growing selection of websites like PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Google Scholar, CAT.INIST or PLoS, just to name a few.

Mendeley Web Importer supported sites

So I know what you are thinking: “Great, there’s a simple way to add documents to my Mendeley library while searching in my favorite browser. Show me how!”

OK, here is how…

First, you need to add the bookmarklet to your browser bookmark bar. Do this by either dragging the link directly to the bookmark bar from the Mendeley web importer page or by going to Mendeley Desktop menu Tools > Install Web Importer. Once that’s done, you should be good to go.

Let’s give it a try by opening up Google Scholar and performing a search for your favorite keyword(s). Let’s say your keywords of interest are “Synthetic Biology”, the Google Scholar results should be something like so:

google-scholar-synthbio

Let us assume there are a few papers that you’d like to add to your library, so you click on the Mendeley web importer bookmarklet and a pop-up window opens. You are presented with a very similar list of references as those presented by Google Scholar with some extra options. Let me point a couple of these extras out (see image highlight):

Mendeley Web importer

Once you’re done importing the documents into your Mendeley library, they are stored in your Mendeley Web account. To be clear, the references are always stored in your library but the actual PDF files may not be imported if they are not openly accessible to Mendeley’s servers.

Side note: If the PDF documents you want to import to Mendeley are not openly accessible but you have access to them via your institutional network/proxy, there is a simple way of adding the document directly to Mendeley Desktop. Simply drag & drop the link to the PDF file and Mendeley Desktop will automatically download the file and auto-extract the document details. Let’s just call this our little secret work-around while it’s not yet fully possible via the web importer, OK?

Getting back to where we were, to have the newly imported documents made available on your computer, simply open Mendeley Desktop and click “Sync Library”.

There you go, without having to download papers one by one or opening multiple web pages, you can easily import documents into your Mendeley library using the one-click web importer.

As mentioned above, the list of supported sites keeps growing and if you would like to see another site added to the list, please feel free to contact us. The web importer also supports any sites using COinS.

Like I said before, the web importer is one of Mendeley’s features that I really enjoy using. How has your experience been using it?

Quick update: The Mendeley team is hard at work finishing up an upcoming feature for the Web Importer that will allow users to store local copies of webpages!

Bibliographies here, bibliographies there, bibliographies anywhere!

Ricardo Vidal13 Comments

If you are currently a Mendeley Desktop user, you will have already noticed that it comes with built-in plug-ins for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer. These plug-ins are really useful for adding citations to your Word/Writer documents and build your bibliography dynamically.

Now, what if you happen to want to add a bibliography section in a document other than MS Word or OO Writer? No problem, we’ve got that covered! You have two options: copy & paste or drag & drop. Both alternatives are very similar.

First you open Mendeley Desktop and select the list of papers or references you would like to include in your bibliography (You can select as many references as you want). Use the normal multiple selection keys you would use to select multiple files in a folder elsewhere on your computer. In my case I’m a Windows/Linux user, so I press and hold the Ctrl key while I highlight the references I want to include.

Once you have all the desired references selected, you should pick which option you prefer: copy & paste or drag & drop.

Mendeley Desktop

To drag & drop, you simply use your mouse to drag the selected references all at once to your document of choice (text document, blog entry form, Google Doc, e-mail etc.) and drop them where you would like them to be listed. You’ll notice they are nicely numbered and formatted. How convenient!

If you prefer to copy & paste, just simply press Crtl+C or go to the menu option Edit > Copy citation and then paste your reference list wherever you like. Yes, also neatly ordered and formatted!

2

As mentioned before, you can copy & paste or drag & drop references into virtually any application or location that allows you to write text. Give it a try, use it to add references in your blog post, an email or anywhere else!

And yes, we know how much you long for the Word plugin for Mac… bear with us!

Share recommended readings using Mendeley’s Public Collections

Ricardo Vidal11 Comments

School is back, so we thought it would be a good time to demonstrate how Mendeley can help professors, teachers, and alike to set up a “Recommended reading” list for their incoming students:

1) Create a new collection in Mendeley (left-side pane)
Don’t worry about the name you give the collection. If you want to rename the collection later just double click on it.

2) Select papers from your library (middle pane)

Make a selection of papers that you would like to include in your “Recommended reading” list and drag & drop them into the newly created collection. Note that you can have papers in multiple collections.

Mendeley Desktop

3) Make your newly created collection public (collections are private by default)
Click on your collection (left pane) to see the papers you’ve added to the list. You’ll notice there’s a “Edit Settings” button above the list (top-right of middle pane). Click it to change your Collection access settings from private to public. Feel free to add a short description of your collection’s content. Finally, press “Sync Library” and a link will be generated for your public collection.

4) View your public collection online and more
By clicking on the link that was created for your public collection you will be taken to your public collection web page at Mendeley Web where you’ll find the list of papers you included in your “Recommended reading” collection. So far so good.
You’ll notice on the left-hand side the title you gave your collection and your name after “Created by…”. There you also find the papers you added! (See one of my public collections here)

public_collection

5) Sharing the goods
You find the tools you need to easily share your public collection on the left side of the collection’s web page. “Embed on other websites” and “Subscribe to RSS”. Let’s focus on the first one, since it’s the easiest one and will allow you to add your list to your class page with a simple copy & paste of provided code.
Click on the “Embed on other websites” option and a text field will show up with code you can use to display your “Recommended reading” collection on your class site.
Notice that there is a “Preview and Customize” button that will allow you to do exactly what they say, preview your collection list or customize the color and size of the frame that will display your list.

6) Copy, paste, stay up-to-date
Once you’ve picked the right color and size for your embedded reading list, you simply copy the provided line of code in the text field and paste it into the HTML of your class page. It’s that simple!
While you’re at it, keep in mind that this is the only change you’ll have to do on your page to keep the list up-to-date. If you want to add a new paper to your reading list, just open Mendeley, import the file and drag & drop it into the public collection you created for your class and sync your library. That’s it.

So there you go, in 6 simple steps you set up your “Recommended reading” list for your class and any updates or changes from one year to the next is easily maintained within Mendeley.

This example can be adapted to a number of other situations. For example for lists of published work on a personal or lab website, a list of recently read papers on a blog, just to name a few.

If you happen to run into any issues setting up your public collection for your class (or for anything else!), please feel free to contact us at support@mendeley.com.