Tag: Developers

On the future of our Open API: feature updates and eating our own dog food

drgunn8 Comments

There have been a few guiding principles that have directed the progress and business strategy of Mendeley from the very beginning, and chief among these is our mission to make research more collaborative and open. We want to build a bridge to a more modern way of using the web for scholarly communication.

To that end, we’ve been hard at work lately improving our Open API, as it’s a critical part of our strategy. We currently serve more than 100 million API calls per month to about 260 third-party apps. In addition, our API powers the analytics dashboard of the Mendeley Institutional Edition, and powers the Institutional Repository sync via Symplectics Elements. We hope to see the numbers of client applications grow, and to that end, we’ve made some fundamental changes to the API. Our overall goal is to further open up our data and extend third-party developers’ capabilities, so here’s a summary of recent and upcoming changes:Read More »

What the scientific community wants computers to do for them: The results of the PLoS and Mendeley Call for Apps

drgunn1 Comment

A little over a week ago, PLoS and Mendeley got together to issue a “Call for Apps” to the scientific community. We have now collected some really great ideas which we’d like to pass along to the developer community. Some of the ideas are Binary Battle-ready, while others are just kinda cool, so take a look at the list and see if anything inspires you.

Some interesting Binary Battle-ready ideas are:Read More »

Tell us about your ideal science app & we'll get someone to build it.

drgunn15 Comments

Research is hard enough without having to deal with crappy software and programs that don’t talk to one another. Part of the problem is that many people who write great code aren’t scientists, so they don’t know what scientists need. We’d like to solve that problem, so we’ve teamed up with the Public Library of Science to issue a “Call for Apps“.

If you have a great idea for a scientific app but lack the coding skills to develop it, you’re in luck! Submit your app idea by August 10th (12pm PDT) and we’ll present it to developers who have the skills to make your dream a reality using the PLoS and Mendeley APIs, which are rich sources of data on scientific trends and stats.

Here are some ideas:

What’s the thing you wish someone would make an app for? We’ve got the data, you’ve got the idea, and chances are there’s someone who wants to bring your idea to life, if they only knew what you needed.

How To Submit Your App Idea:

  • Complete the Binary Battle App Idea Submission form
  • Leave a comment on this blog post with your ideas
  • or just tweet your idea using the #binarybattle hashtag

If you’re a developer, you may wish to enter your completed app in the Binary Battle.

BBQ Friday at the Mendeley London offices

drgunn

We work hard at Mendeley, so we also take the opportunity, every now and then, to relax and enjoy each other’s company with a little good food and drink. Mainly because we want to meet more folks interested in changing the world, starting with how research is done, but also partly because we need some fresh blood in the foosball league, we thought we’d invite London-based developers to join us this Friday. So developers, if you’re in London this weekend, please join us at the Mendeley HQ for BBQ Friday. Space is limited so please RVSP to zuzana@mendeley.com, including a CV, to let us know if you plan on coming. We’ll have the rooptop deck open and Mendeley staff will be on hand for conversation and perhaps a bit of foosball – if you think you’re up to the challenge.

Friday June 24th, 2011, 6 – 9pm
144a Clerkenwell Road, Ground Floor
London EC1R 5DF

With best wishes, and great anticipation,
The Mendeley Team

PLoS joins Mendeley as co-sponsor of the Binary Battle!

drgunn

The Public Library of Science, the world’s largest Open Access publisher, has joined Mendeley in co-sponsoring the Binary Battle, the contest to build the best apps that make science more open using PLoS and Mendeley’s API’s. This brings the prize money to be won up to $16,000 plus other cool gifts and the opportunity to get your entries in front of a panel of influential judges from technology, media and science.

What is the Binary Battle?

The Mendeley & PLoS Binary Battle is a contest to build the coolest, most popular, and most useful application using Mendeley’s open database of over 90 million research papers, usage statistics, reader demographics, social tags, and related research recommendations or PLoS’s Search API which provides PLoS content for your desktop, web, or mobile application. You can find the full details on the Mendeley API Binary Battle page or read the announcement from PLoS.Read More »

Think beyond the consumer internet: Hack for Knowledge!

drgunn
Knowledge keeper by RuiPereira, on Flickr

Photo by Rui Pereira

Do you dream of creating the Blippy for BriteKite, or the Gowalla for GetGlue? No? Well, maybe you’re thinking beyond better ways to sell stuff to people and wanting to try something a little bigger. You wouldn’t be alone. Universities, governmental bodies, and companies have increasingly begun to make their data available to the public and they want it to be used! All we need now is for smart developers to realize there’s as much money and considerably more fame to be had in helping people find the next cure for cancer or spotting public health issues than in spotting buy-one-get-one deals at the local store. Please join us on June 11th and 12th for Hack4Knowledge.Read More »

Get Excited and Make Things: Mendeley is a research platform

drgunn1 Comment
Don't Keep Calm and Carry On

Image via blackbeltjones

The Mendeley API has been public since August and we now have tons of cool projects using the unique social research data available through the Open API. There are plugins for WordPress and Drupal, data mashups like Readermeter, a mobile app for Android(coming soon), and there’s even a basic app that shows papers related to a tweet.
Check out the App Showcase to see some of these and get information on how to use these great tools your fellow academics have created. I’ve put up a page showing the WordPress plugins in action here, and for many of the others, just click through to check them out.

Hey Developers! Want to know how can you get in on all this fun? Just step right over to our shiny new developer portal and you’ll find all you need to get started. Documentation, developer support, and more. How about hacking something together this weekend?

If you just want to show your profile or your group papers on a page, we’ve made that easy for you. Just click the embed button in the about box on the group overview page to get a customized code snippet you can use anywhere you can put HTML, such as profile pages or blog sidebars. To embed your profile, click on My Account and select “Edit My Profile”. On the right, you’ll see the embed option. More details here.

Announcing the Mendeley Open API – Call for proposals

Jason Hoyt2 Comments

It’s almost here, the Mendeley Open API that third-party developers can use to create their own mashups. The API won’t be immediately available to everyone quite yet, but we would like to invite any developers interested in early access to submit a proposal of what you envision building.

The call for proposals is open until Friday, May 14th. Selected developers will be notified between now and May 21st.

For more information on how to submit your proposal please see the Open API page.

For more information about the API methods please see the API methods page.

If you take a look at our feedback page you will quickly see how many feature requests we are getting on a daily basis. We would love to implement all of them, but unfortunately that isn’t possible. Additionally, many researchers require niche-specific tools that are not suitable for inclusion in a general purpose tool such as Mendeley. The obvious solution to both of these problems is to open up the data and let creative developers and inspired academics create what they need on top of that data.

With the Open API, you will have access to both aggregated statistics and your own library. Developers can create applications to improve your research experience (for privacy reasons, you will need to authenticate yourself before third-party applications can access your data). Libraries and publishers can build simple Web apps to pull in article-level metrics to enhance what you see when visiting their websites.

We are extremely excited to see what the community and developers, who for years have not had access to this type of data, can create with the API tools. For far too long, this type of data has been siloed away from the general developer community; even worse, the end-user researchers. The richness of academic knowledge is finally in an accessible and open form, so that “Silicon Valley” and other creative developers around the world have a practical means to participate in scientific research. The world is now connected to academia.

Jason Hoyt, PhD | Research Director

Follow Jason and Mendeley on twitter for more announcements