Category: start-up life

Ups and downs having an internet start-up. All the drama from Mendeley headquarters.

Meet the Mendeley Community Team

joaobernardinomdly2 Comments

We thought it was high time we put a face to the name by introducing you to the Mendeley Team one team at a time. First up: The Community Team.

The Mendeley Community team is here to support, connect, and engage with our users. Our goal is to make the Mendeley user experience as useful and valuable as possible through tools and resources and real human interactions.  We also strive to develop meaningful relationships with our 1900+ Advisors as they are the heartbeat of our user community.

We are always eager to meet our users to better understand your researcher journey and how Mendeley can better serve you, so if you are ever in the London area, the team would love to meet you! Email shruti.desai@mendeley.com for more details.

 

Jessica Reeves, Head of User Engagement

Jessica Reeves - Head of User EngagementJessica joined Mendeley in 2012. She holds a MSc in Organisational Analysis from King’s College in London, but her previous degrees are a bit more varied: Her B.A. from Communications and Business is from Tulane University, followed by a MPS Preservation of Historic Architecture.

You can follow her on Twitter @jessreeves1.

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

To start, it’s my dream job! I have the opportunity to work with almost every team within Mendeley for the sole benefit of providing a valuable tool for our users so you can change the world of science. Whether we are focusing on enhancing the product workflow, discussing how best to communicate with our users or creating resources to use Mendeley, the users are always at the heart of the matter. In addition to working with brilliant colleagues, the Community team has the good fortune of working with our 1900+ global Advisors. The Advisors are the heartbeat of the user community, the Mendeley enthusiasts. As the leader of the Community team it is my mission to ensure our user community is engaged, educated and excited about what Mendeley is doing to change the way we do research.

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

The people and the opportunity to make a true difference in the outcome of and collaborations within scientific research. The street food market outside our office is not too bad either 🙂

What do you do in your free time?

I realise that two of my hobbies, surfing and sailing, are inspired by my love of the sea. I have been lucky enough to see many  countries of the world from the seashore. Brazil still tops my list for best surf spots and the Croatian coast is by far my favourite sailing spot. Because I spend so much time on or in the sea I have a huge respect for our oceans and the creatures who allow us to be part of their world which led to my thrid passion, conservation.  Specifically shark conservation is a special interest because of the key role they play in this delicate ecosystem.

 

João Bernardino, Insights Marketing Manager

Joao Bernardino - Insights Marketing Manager

Joao joined Mendeley in 2013, after studying Management in Lisbon and Paris. He started his working life working for an insurance company, but after diving deep into financial products and insurance policies, he discovered it wasn’t for him. So he headed to London, where he discovered Mendeley during his Master’s thesis in Marketing, which he did in London and Germany. He previously worked at Adidas doing product marketing (and collecting shoes).

You can follow him on twitter @joaorbernardino

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

My role on the Community Team is a series of fun and challenging tasks that makes me understand our Mendeley community and how we can better support them. It is an exciting role that keeps me in contact with our enthusiastic Advisors and all of our Mendeley internal teams. It is a pleasure to work surrounded by such smart and interesting people.

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

My favourite part about working at Mendeley is the fact that we can actually change the way research is done and improve researchers’ lives, contributing to bigger discoveries.

When I saw the opportunity to join the Mendeley team, I didn’t think twice. This was a company that I wanted to work for. It breathes innovation and success, and as I once noticed quoted on the website, “It’s the most fun you can have with your pants on.”

What do you do in your free time?

In my free time I like cycling, playing volleyball and surfing when I’m back home or whenever I get the chance to meet the sea. I also enjoy to learn new skills such as tech (new software, new products, etc) or artistic (photography, drawing, music, etc).

Claire van den Broek, Education Program Manager

claire2Meet our newest team member! Claire joined our team February 2014, moving from the United States where she completed a dual degree PhD in comparative literature and German Studies. She was born and raised in the Netherlands, and worked as a researcher, university lecturer and academic translator before joining Mendeley.

You can follow her on Twitter @CYvdB

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

As Education Program Manager, I am responsible for Mendeley’s online resources, including video tutorials and guides. I also create and manage educational materials that help others spread the word about Mendeley.

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

Mendeley’s London office is a great place to work; my colleagues are young, enthusiastic, exceptionally talented and you can tell how much they enjoy working here. I only recently joined Mendeley and I am really impressed with the positive office atmosphere created by the founders. The endless free fruit, breakfasts, pizza, cake, snacks and foosball table help of course 😉

What do you do in your free time?

In my spare time I love traveling to unusual places and geocaching. I also look forward to visiting my parents in The Netherlands on weekends again, after many years of living far away in America.

 

Shruti M. Desai, Community Relations Executive

Shruti M. Desai - Community Relations Executive

Shruti joined Mendeley in late 2013. She worked for nearly a decade as a journalist, at various U.S. newspapers and magazines as a reporter in: local government, food and fashion, and education, to name a few.

She transitioned into science outreach at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, in Dresden, Germany, where she was the Science and Society Program Coordinator.

 

You can follow her on Twitter @inothernews

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

My role is to help develop community outreach programs. Part of that role is to share stories of user experiences with the Mendeley team, while raising awareness of Mendeley incentives amongst our users and Advisors.

I work closely with the Advisor community, looking to build relationships and collaborations with researchers, and plan events, training sessions, and other outreach initiatives to raise awareness of Mendeley in research communities.

Spud

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

I really love working with the Advisor Community. It sounds cheesy and overly-earnest, but they honestly blow me away with their enthusiasm, skills, and support. I hope I can support them equally. Also the Mendeley London offices are really fun, filled with talented people who also know how to have a good time. (It doesn’t hurt that occasional office dog Spud is currently snoozing on my lap.)

What do you do in your free time?

I love Roller Derby and used to play for the Dresden Pioneers, but am now am “just” a  fan. I enjoy sharing food with friends, reading YA Literature, and exploring new cultures through travel. I am also happy to be married to science researcher, though sometimes I wish the lab gave him more free time.

 

Ricardo Vidal, Outreach Liaison

Ricardo Vidal - Outreach Liaison

Ricardo attended the University of Algarve (UALG) in Southern Portugal where he received his academic training in the field of biological engineering. Ricardo holds a Masters of Engineering diploma which he obtained at UALG, and as a visiting graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His Masters thesis was focused on the subject of Synthetic Biology and assisted simulation of biobrick construction via bioinformatic tools.

With a strong interest in studying biological systems from a standardized and analytical perspective, Ricardo jumped into his PhD work at Queen’s University (Canada) in the field of bioinformatics and health data analytics in cancer research.

You can follow him on Twitter @rvidal.

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

I’ve has been using Mendeley since the summer of 2008 (early beta-tester) and have been a part of the team ever since. My role as part of the Mendeley team has been quite diverse. Always within the scope of our community team efforts, I’ve played a role of outreach and education about Mendeley. My network and communication skills have allowed me to establish strong and long-lasting connections with a large number of users. My technical skills have enabled me to help produce and project materials and programs that further enabled our educational efforts.

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

I’d say my favorite part is working and interacting with so many great people. Both internally at Mendeley and externally via the community at large. I’ve made some long-lasting connections that have turned into great friendships. As a research scientists and engineer that continuously uses Mendeley Desktop, I get to speak to, and participate with, the users and developers on a pretty close level.

What do you do in your free time?

Uhm, free time? What’s that? Haha! All spare time from work and research is spent playing with my kids.

 

William Gunn, Head of Academic Outreach

William Gunn - Head of Academic Outreach

Dr. Gunn attended Tulane University as a Louisiana Board of Regents Fellow, receiving his Ph.D in Biomedical Science from the Center for Gene Therapy at Tulane University in 2008. His research involved dissecting the molecular mechanism of bone metastasis in multiple myeloma and resulted in a novel treatment approach employing mesenchymal stem cells, the body’s own reparative forces. Frustrated with the inefficiencies of the modern research process, he left academia and established the biology program at Genalyte, a novel diagnostics startup. At Mendeley, he works to make research more impactful and reproducible and is an expert on altmetrics, reproducibility, and open access.

You can follow him on Twitter @mrgunn.

How do you describe your role on the Community team?

As Head of Academic Outreach for Mendeley, I blend deep technical knowledge and industry insight with clear and effective communication skills. I spend a good deal of time writing blog posts, essays, technical papers, presentations,and in general contributing to interesting conversations happening across academia and the tech community, but I also do things that don’t fall under the traditional communication categories.

I also co-direct the Reproducibility Initiative with Elizabeth Iorns and co-organizes Science Online Bay Area with colleagues from other tech companies in the area to bring together people who are doing interesting things that influence how science is carried out and communicated online.

What is your favorite part about working for Mendeley?

I’ve been with Mendeley since 2009, and since the very beginning the thing that has really made it a great place to work has been the freedom to contribute broadly across the organization. If you are interested in taking something on and show the capacity to handle it, you can own your own destiny here. The support and individual care the founders have for each person really helps me feel like my unique skills are appreciated.

What do you do in your free time?

I enjoy cooking and making things with my hands, especially with the assistance of my daughter Charlotte.

There is definitely life after acquisition

Alice Bonasio

Life After Acquisition

 

Last week Jan Reichelt, President and Co-Founder of Mendeley, got together with two other tech company founders to share their personal experiences of what the ride has been like so far.

The podcast was hosted by TechCityinsider and gave some candid insight into both the challenges and the advantages of being integrated into a large corporation. How did the acquisition come about, and once it happens, how do you keep the start-up culture and entrepreneurial spirit that made you successful in the first place?

We were talking to strategic players in the market about things like distribution,  co-development of products, and investments, and Elsevier was very interested. As a start-up you want to get out there and be noticed, and Elsevier has a huge reach to academic institutions and end users through their publications. Plus the strategic alignment was clearly there in what we wanted to build.

The reason we did the acquisition in the first place is because we felt we could accelerate what we’ve done in the past. Mendeley was acquired as a strategic asset for Elsevier, and they are going to invest in it. This year we’re hiring 30 people! As a founder that is what you want isn’t it? For this thing you started to flourish and have even more impact than before.

When asked why he stayed on board after the acquisition, Jan said the challenges that motivated him to start Mendeley are still there:

The difference is that you don’t have to worry so much about how do you fund the business, or about revenue streams. In our case the acquisition was not based on projected revenue streams, but rather to help Elsevier to build its digital product footprint. So from that perspective the motivation is still there, and nothing has changed. Why would I want to leave?

We made the decision to stay as a founding team, together with my other two Co-founders (Victor Henning and Paul Foeckler) and we committed to make this happen in a new environment, where you are not reporting to investors any more, but of course you’re then reporting to a larger organization, so the challenges are much the same, but with different stakeholders.

Obviously things changed, and the biggest change were the different cultures. In the start-up world you make a decision, move on and learn, and you’re working in a small group. Elsevier is of course a multi-faceted company with many different stakeholders, so your challenge is to find your way around but at the same time not lose traction with your own product and your own team, because that is what you care about.  Some things have slowed down and sometimes I feel that we could be doing things faster, but at the same time, we have to grow up as a start-up as well, and we would have faced some of those pains as a growing company anyway.

Tom Allason from Shutl (which was acquired by eBay in 2013) agreed that when you’re a big company with responsibility to public shareholders you kind of have to get it right the first time, but Moonfruit’s Wendy Tan White also believes there is a lot that big corporations can learn from the way that start-ups operate. Her goal is to transfer some of their entrepreneurial DNA to their parent company, and the same holds true for Mendeley:

We run a very agile software development process, and in our particular case that is one of the things that Elsevier is really keen to support, as they currently still have very big legacy systems and long release cycles. They want to incorporate some of this agile attitude to knowledge into their own systems, so they’re quite supportive of that.

The attitude that we now try to pursue is: Let’s continue to be entrepreneurial because that is ultimately what will make the difference to the market, to the customers and to both companies. Nobody knows better than you how your company ticks, so retain that positive attitude despite the additional challenges coming your way.

Mendeley Year in Review 2013

joaobernardinomdly

This was a year of great change at Mendeley, with lots of news, exciting developments and, of course, tons of fun at Mendeley HQ. Here are a few of the many highlights:

In January, the Mendeley founders Jan, Paul, and Victor were voted “Best Startup Founders” at the Europas, considered the Oscars of the European Tech scene. This was the second win for Mendeley, which scooped up the prize for “Best Social Innovation Which Benefits Society” in 2009.

In February, we listened to your comments and released Mendeley Desktop v1.8, with expanded offerings and bug fixes.

April brought a lot of attention as Mendeley joined Elsevier. We’re proud to have honoured our promise that the merger would mean very little change for our users, beyond some positive resources…like the doubling of storage space that immediately followed the announcement.

Our Mendeley team participates in monthly hack days. In June, two of our team came up with a cool video that shows Mendeley Desktop Syncs mapped globally. There is something hypnotically beautiful about that video.

Also in June, we opened our doors and invited our Advisors and users to join us at Mendeley HQ . The day had sneak previews and testing of new features and one-on-one chance to talk to the teams at Mendeley and Elsevier…we also managed to squeeze in some fun with Lego playtime, Post-it note fun and loads and loads of food. We hope to do it again in 2014 and see you all there! Check our YouTube video for a quick review of the day.

We continued to meet with the community in July, and hosted an all-day mini-conference on Academic-Industrial Collaborations for Recommender Systems. It was an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges of academic-industrial collaborations.

With the start of the academic year in September, we were proud to announce your ability to take Mendeley on the go and introduced our Mendeley for iOS app. (Android users, don’t despair, it is high on our priority list).

We participated in October’s Social Media week in London and hosted an event in conjunction with this year’s theme “Open & Connected.” Missed the presentations? Watch them here.

Mendeley was also involved in a number of partnerships and expanded external apps that we support. To name a few (but certainly not all): F1000 Partnership, ScienceDirect import capabilities, Third-party developer apps (To learn more about creating your own App, visit our Mendeley Developers Portal) and our latest…Mendeley users can now import directly from Scopus.

And this month, we’ve been preparing our product development roadmap. What does that mean? Stay tuned!

Thank you for a wonderful 2013. Happy wishes for the New Year and here’s to making 2014 even better.

 Team Photo

The Mendeley Team

Mendeley Has 2.5 Million Users!

Alice Bonasio1 Comment

Photo: http://www.morguefile.com/creative/michila

We’ve done it! Mendeley now has 2.5 million users all over the world. This is a huge milestone for us, and of course we only got there because of our amazing community of researchers, so a really heartfelt THANKS goes to all of you.

We hope that over the years since Mendeley started and as we grew into a global research community, we helped to make your lives and work a little easier by giving you the right tools to organise your papers, collaborate with other academics and discover content.

To celebrate we might just have a barbecue on our rooftop terrace if the London weather permits, but if you have any suggestions of how else we could mark the occasion please send them along!

Team Mendeley Races for Life!

Alice Bonasio4 Comments

Race for Life Mendeley

 

Last Saturday the 22nd June, instead of relaxing in bed like the rest of us, the women from the Mendeley (and Elsevier) team got themselves over to Finsbury Park in London to take part in a charity run for Cancer Research UK.

The weather was not great, but Zuzana, Carole, Rosario, Elena, Charlotte, Veronica and Jessica bravely ran or walked the 5k, with Zuzana and Rosario finishing in under 30 minutes!

Some of the guys from the Mendeley team also showed up to cheer them on, and the rest of the team supported the effort with fundraising initiatives such as baking tasty caffeinated brownies (Andi’s specialty!) which raised a whopping £95. The total raised including gift-aid topped £1000 so we hope that helps to make a difference for this worthy cause!

 

 

Want to get real user feedback? Let them in.

Alice Bonasio

Research-Hub

We all know that user testing and feedback is essential in building intuitive, customer-centric products, and in fulfilling the wants and needs that those users might not realise they had until they come across a solution (hopefully yours). But getting direct input has traditionally been far from straightforward, and often prohibitively expensive for small enterprises.

Whichever way you do it, the Holy Grail is to build a communication channel with your users where they can give you feedback in the most frictionless way possible. Ideally, they should feel like you’re a friend they can chat to over a cup of coffee. So, why not take that idea literally? Instead of escorting someone to their usability testing workstation or putting them with strangers in a focus group, why not invite them into the office and just let them mingle?

Letting your customers see what you do is hardly a new trend. As journalist Lambeth Hochwald wrote, you only need to look at the way bakers have for years created a space for showing off frosting prowess (to which I would add the more recent trend towards open kitchens in restaurants) in order to see how this transparency is appealing to consumers – whatever the product.

People want to feel that they can build a relationship with a product, and this is particularly true when it comes to technology, where that relationship with an app or platform involves long-term interaction, the surrender of personal data, and often – as is the case with Facebook, LinkedIn and our own research collaboration platform Mendeley – the projection of your own personal and professional profile through that product.

The trick is to approach each user as you would an investor, because they are, after all, going to invest time, energy, and a surprising amount of emotion into using your product, and these are precious, monetizable commodities these days. This is why it’s crucial to pitch them the whole package, since getting to know who’s behind the product is getting you a step closer to them trusting the idea.

That’s the concept behind the Research Hub we created in Mendeley’s London office. In and of itself it’s nothing fancy; a collection of 6 desks in a nice airy space, decorated with some pot plants and posters of famous scientists. There is free Wi-Fi and our guests are welcome to help themselves to drinks and snacks in the kitchen or join a game of foosball, chess or Jenga at lunchtime. People use an online system similar to those used to reserve tables at restaurants to book in a time slot at one of the desks, each named after a famous scientist like Einstein, Newton or Marie Curie.

The researchers who pop in can be from out of town or even abroad, and some are local to London and just tired of wrestling with undergraduate students for library desk space. In return for using the facilities we might ask them to give us some feedback and actually test some new features here and there for half an hour at a time, but feedback can also happen around the proverbial water cooler (in our case the coffee machine). This gives them a chance to have direct input in a very natural way, and constantly reminds the team of the real people that use the product every day.

Some companies still have a culture where they hold on tightly to their secrets and are afraid of outsiders taking a peek behind the curtains, but in the world of tech where open APIs and lightning-fast iterations rule, what you can get back from real-time feedback – combined with the goodwill that openness engenders – far outweighs those risks. If you expect your users to love and share your product, then you have to be prepared to show your love and share everything with them too.

Would you like to visit the Mendeley Research Hub? We’d love to see you there, just click here to book!

Mendelife – Meet Branden Faulls

Alice Bonasio

 Branden Faulls

 

Branden is our VP Product, known online by the mysterious alias of “omphe”.  To pronounce it, he explains, imagine being hit in the gut with a sack full of marshmallows.


How long have you been with Mendeley for?
Since May 2012

Where did you work before coming to Mendeley ?
I was a tech contractor so I’ve really worked just about everywhere:  AMEE, Imano, Dennis Publishing, Capita, HomeServe etc, etc. But my first career was as a dancer and I toured the world working with Rambert Dance Company, San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet and more.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
Paul Föckler and I met at a Scalability unconference at the Guardian in 2010.  I was talking a lot about delivery and scaling technical team management in some of the sessions and we had a brief talk about the growth that Mendeley was going through. Fast forward to last year, and he approached me about the opening for Product leadership.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
I’d like to think that I’ve had a good impact on the transparency of our direction and priorities since I’ve arrived.  I’ve really been pushing for radical transparency around all of our choices of what we’ll develop for users and what everyone is working on at any given week.  We’ve got much greater visibility around the planned work ahead and David Lee and the insight/analytics team have made great progress on showing how we are performing against our commitments. But the big change is how much the team has grown and the recent momentum we’ve been picking up as we start moving in sync. There’s a lot more collaboration going on and this is going to result in some great improvements to the Mendeley user experience.

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
I get to work with some very clever people who are extremely passionate about what they want in the product. And the food on Leather Lane.

Do you have any pets?
I’ve got a lovely old border collie named Ruby who’s been my pal for 11 years now. She’s stuck with me through some pretty big life changes and always kept me moving on some pretty ambitious outdoor pursuits.  She’s getting a little slower in the mountains, but we’ll be out for an adventure as long as we can still get out there.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
I’ve never been particularly attached to specific websites, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t survive without the app Pocket.  I have such a steady stream of links and posts flooding my attention every day and I love being able to import them to Pocket and catch up without distraction when I’m travelling.  We’d do well, to make our mobile app fill the same role in researchers lives and I think Steve Dennis has been doing an amazing job of taming the flood of research articles for researchers on the go.

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
I dreamt of being an astronomer for a long while and I spent many a cold winter evening steaming up my backyard telescope while staring down the jittery craters of the moon. My enthusiasm died a bit when I discovered the central role of maths in modern astronomy and the realisation that telescope time was a rare and scarce commodity. Then I fancied being a doctor until a field trip to a pathology lab full of oversized livers and sliced cadavers put me off too.  And mountaineering had a big draw to me, despite growing up in a relatively flat part of the States. But I had been in a ballet studio from the age of six, so by my teens it was becoming pretty clear to me that I had a future and calling to be onstage and I grabbed that opportunity.  Dancers really need to be in a company as an apprentice by the time they’re 17-18, so I left home at 17 to follow my dream.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Patience.  Life is short and I’m on the third act of my second career.  But if you always rush, you miss the richness of what you have right now.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
I’m terrible about starting many books at once and always have several things on the go:

– The Art of the Start & Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki : I love Kawasaki’s distilled and lucid approach to startup business
– Data Visualisation : I’ve been learning Processing.org to keep my programming chops up and to scratch some visualisation itches I’ve had
– Think Stats : I work with some incredibly smart people at Mendeley and its disrespectful not to understand and wield some more rigorous statistical skills
– Bandit Algorithms for website optimisation : I want to start pushing our behavioural testing here and there are some great algorithms in this text
– Insanely Simple : The Apple approach to product and development is focussed and successful. An awesome look at their approach.
–  Welsh 3000 Ft challenges: I’m under the impression that I’ll get fit enough to compete this gruelling 29 miler in Snowdonia this year.  We’ll see
– Goedel, Escher, Bach : I’m stuck a bit on this, but its a fascinating blend of art, science and philosophy

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
We’d stop destroying this incredible planet we live on in the pursuit of passing desire.  I spend a good deal of time on glaciers at high altitude and have seen first-hand how quickly our climate is warming.  I just can’t fathom why we’d allow this to happen, just to preserve our privilege of driving our lazy butts to go shopping.

Favourite hobby?
I code and make things whenever I get the chance and having kids is giving me great excuses to do that in spades.  My daughter and I are building robots with Lego and Arduino these days.  Go #dadops.

Favourite food/drink?
I am a bit of a sucker for Pizza.  And with Maletti so close up the road, its hard to resist.

Favourite film?
Blade Runner remains my enduring favourite.  Since becoming a father, I see less film in the cinema than I used to, but I’m getting to rediscover all the great kids films.  My daughter Bella and I love the “Old Bamboo” number from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.  Plus Pixar can do no wrong. (Except Cars, which was nothing but wrong.  Let’s never speak of it again.)

Three things you would put in Room 101
Plastic waste
Sticking plasters in swimming pools
People who don’t make eye contact or return a friendly “Hello” when you pass and greet them.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give
unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it
be and why?

I’d get everyone to stop messing about with genetic modification.  I mean, c’mon, we’re just thinking small!  Glow in the dark mice?  Pest resistant grain!  Give me a flat-chested, eight legged chicken and I’ll show you more Sunday roast than you could shake a drumstick at.

Oh, and cancer of course.

Mendelife – Meet Rosario Garcia de Zuniga

Alice Bonasio

Rosario Garcia de Zuniga

Rosario is a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead here at Mendeley, and she’s been with us pretty much from the start, nearly 4 years! So we catch up with her to ask what it was like back then, what’s changed, and what makes her stick around!

Do you have any nicknames?
Many, but the most recent one is Rosie

Where did you work before coming to Mendeley?
Before moving to London I was working at the University of Seville for RedIRIS which is the Spanish National Technology Foundation.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
The company was young with an interesting and really ambitious goal. I
always wanted to be part of something big and Mendeley seemed to have a
lot of potential.

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I do remember being really
scared of speaking English, as at that time wasn’t very good, and I was
really quiet… That’s not really happening any more! Good times
though…

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
A lot! When I joined we were like 10-12 people if I remember correctly.
I’ve moved offices once and desks… I can’t even remember how many
times now! There’s been times I’ve arrived to the office after holidays
and not recognised half of the people there, but that’s always fun! They
look as confused as I do 😉

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
The people I work with, without any doubt. I love my team! What we’re
building is amazing and is helping a lot of researchers to make this
world better! That’s what gets me out of bed every day.

Do you have any pets?
My family has 2 little cute dogs (smooth fox terriers) in Spain – I pretty much love all animals, but I have a special soft spot for sausage dogs, they’re just too cute.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party?
The Monty Pythons, Tchaikovsky, Chris O’Dowd, Einstein, Freddy Mercury and all the people I love! The more the merrier.

What is the one website you can’t live without?
Soundcloud and Grooveshark

When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
I changed my mind a lot actually… First, like my mum, a chemist, so I could make my own potions – then an engineer, like my dad, who I consider one of the smartest people I know. And then finally, a pianist, but it was too late for that when I had to decide!

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
Being musically gifted would be amazing. I’d love if I could play the piano.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
I tend to have a few books in the pipeline and I read them as my mood goes – reading a few techie books, a few comic books (Maus, Saga) and some others…

What was the first record you ever bought?
I think it was No Need to Argue by The Cranberries.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
A lot. Around 300 playlists and nearly 9k tracks on my Spotify… I pretty much listen to everything, but lately what keeps me going is Pretty Lights.

Favourite video game/hobby?
My favourite video game of all time is Final Fantasy VII. My favourite hobby, without any doubt: listening to music and dancing.

Favourite food/drink?
Serrano ham, french fries, cheese / Coca Cola, a nice wine and Hendricks!

Favourite film?
Difficult to choose… I never get tired of Finding Nemo, A Clockwork Orange, Moulin Rouge or The Notebook.

Favourite place in the world?
Any sunny solitary beach does it for me, really. Maracaipe in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil would be my current favourite.

Three things you would put in Room 101
Rude/mean people, politicians, Internet trolls.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it be and why?

Cancer. Unfortunately, I’ve had to see a lot of my loved ones dying and suffering from it.

Team Mendeley is joining Elsevier. Good things are about to happen!

victorhenning38 Comments

Today we are excited to announce that Mendeley is joining Elsevier!

Team-Photo-560px

You might already have heard some rumors and speculation about this in the past few weeks. We hope you’ll understand that we couldn’t address the rumors head-on until there was some actual news to share with you. Now that the union is official, we would like to take some time to explain how it will benefit Mendeley’s and Elsevier’s users, the research community in general, as well as address some of the questions you may have.

The most important things first: very little will change for you as a Mendeley user. In fact, Mendeley is only going to get better for you. For starters, we are doubling everyone’s storage space at no cost. Your free Mendeley account now comes with 2GB, Mendeley Plus and MIE accounts get upgraded to 5GB, and Mendeley Pro accounts to 10GB. There will always be a free version of Mendeley, and our functionality will continue to improve, now even faster than before. We will focus on what has made Mendeley a success in the first place: ensuring that everything we do makes our users’ lives easier and listening closely to your needs. Your data will still be owned by you, we will continue to support standard and open data formats for import and export to ensure that data portability, and – as explained recently – we will invest heavily in our Open API, which will further evolve as a treasure trove of openly licensed research data. Our vision continues to be to make science more collaborative and open, and now we will work towards this vision with the support of the world’s largest science publisher.

Elsevier’s resources, partnerships, and reach in the academic, library, and professional community will enable us to accelerate our progress towards our vision. Our team will expand significantly over the next few years. Elsevier’s Scopus and ScienceDirect platforms will become seamlessly interoperable with Mendeley, creating a central discovery, workflow, and collaboration network for the global research community. Here’s Elsevier’s comments about what they expect from the partnership.

On a more personal note, let me also explain why we chose to team up with Elsevier at this point. Mendeley had just raised a significant round of funding from existing and new investors, with more investors wanting to join. Also, Mendeley’s revenues from our individual and team premium accounts, as well as our new Mendeley Institutional Edition, had tripled over the past year. We could have continued on our path independently, yet we felt that the opportunity to give our users access to better content, more data, and faster development was just too exciting to pass up.

Of course, we are aware that – especially in the past year – the academic community has criticized Elsevier for some of its policies and positions. Our own relationship with Elsevier has been conflicted at times. Elsevier is a multi-faceted company with over 7000 employees, so it is impossible to put them into a single box. We were being challenged by some parts of the organization over whether we intended to undermine journal publishers (which was never the case), while other parts of the organization were building successful working relationships with us and even helped to promote Mendeley.

For example, when Elsevier decided to shut down its social bookmarking service, the 2collab team collaborated with us to build a data import tool, then recommended their users to migrate to us, the upstart competitor. When we co-hosted (together with Nature Publishing Group and the British Library) the Science Online London Conference to talk about Open Science, Elsevier was one of our first sponsors. And when we launched our Open API, Elsevier was the first major publisher to embrace our data and build a Mendeley Readership App for their application platform.

Time and time again, Elsevier struck us as one of the most innovative and tech-savvy publishers out there. They have launched challenges to make research papers more interactive and useful, improve the process and incentives of peer review, and build knowledge discovery and visualization tools for the life sciences. They provide tools for exploring and unearthing connections between researchers and contribute to the ORCID author profile initiative. Like us, the Elsevier Labs team is researching semantics, taxonomies, natural language processing, data visualization, and big data analytics. Lastly, Elsevier’s applications platform mirrors our own ambition of enabling developers to create unique new research tools.

Elsevier is a large, complex organization – to say the least! While not all of its moves or business models have been universally embraced, it is also a hugely relevant, dynamic force in global publishing and research. More importantly, we have found that the individual team members – the employees, editors, innovators, and tool developers we’ve worked with – all share our genuine desire to advance science. This is why we’re thrilled to join Elsevier and help shape its future.

In sum, the overlap between Elsevier’s and our vision has always been remarkable. Combining Elsevier’s content, analytics tools, and long-standing publisher/society relationships with Mendeley’s collaboration platform and social data will enable both of us to develop amazing new services that will make your research life easier.

I know you’ll have a lot of questions, so please find some additional information here. If you’re still skeptical about whether this will be a good thing for you as a user, we hope to convince you by our actions over the next few weeks and months. Good things are about to happen!

Thank you for all of your support, and thanks especially to our incredible team of Mendeley Advisors!

Jan, Paul, Victor, and Team Mendeley

Mendelife – Meet David Lee

Alice Bonasio

David Lee

This time around, we have a friendly chat with our VP Finance & Operations David Lee, who’s been with us here at Mendeley for just under a year, before which he worked for the likes of EMI and Betfair.

What made you apply for a job at Mendeley?
Mendeley ticked all the criteria I was looking for in my next challenge: I wanted to help build a company with an innovative/disruptive product with huge potential. Work with real entrepreneurs and have a role with lots of responsibility and impact.

When you started working here, were things like you expected?
I knew there would be a cultural change going from a corporate to a start-up, but I was pleasantly surprised. Mendeley has a fun environment and a genuine team culture, it really feels like we are all in the same boat working together to make something great.

Have things changed in Mendeley since you started working here?
I like to think that I have brought a certain level of organisation and focus to the company. Not too much, but just enough.

What’s the best thing about coming to work at Mendeley?
The ability to get stuff done quickly and have a very real and immediate impact is highly rewarding and refreshing (compared with a larger corp organisation).

Do you have any pets? If not, what would be your ideal one?
My ideal pet would be a Dashchund that shits money.

Who would be invited to your perfect dinner party? (you may include fictional characters and dead people)
I was lucky enough recently to be invited to a dinner party with this years BAFTA winners/nominees. It would be hard to top that.

If you could acquire one extra skill or talent, what would that be?
The ability to fly

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Steve Jobs biography – it’s taken me months to get through. I am always reading about entrepreneurs, innovation, start-ups and business strategy.

What would you change about the world if you could change one thing?
Suffering

What was the first record you ever bought?
Starship – Nothings going to stop us now.

What music is on your iPod at the moment?
I am mostly on Spotify now. I love using their app platform for music discovery.

Favourite food/drink?
I do love a tasty burger

Favourite film?
Impossible question. But Star Wars would feature somewhere close to the top.

Favourite place in the world?
Tokyo with my wife

Three things you would put in Room 101
Jan, Victor and Paul! ha ha ha ha! Only kidding, those guys rock.

Now for a serious one worthy of the Mendeley vision: If you could give
unlimited funding and resources to one area of research, what would it
be and why
Time travel.