Tag: New features

Mendeley Desktop 1.13 Released – Faster Sync & Catalog Import

Robert Knight11 Comments

Mendeley Desktop 1.13 is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux. This update has largely been about under-the-hood work on sync functionality to make it faster and enable you to access it across a wider range of platforms. Coming soon, you’ll be able to access your Mendeley library from our upcoming new web and Android apps, plus a revamped iOS app.

We’ve also been working on improving the PDF import functionality. The new release of Mendeley will automatically update imported documents with details of the matching entry in our catalog, enabling you to cite the paper without further corrections more often.

New and improved in this release

Faster Sync

In addition to enabling new first and third-party apps for accessing your Mendeley library, the new sync infrastructure allows faster and more data-efficient sync of large libraries. Syncing a typical library is now 2-3x faster. If your library is large (many thousands of entries) or you are on a slower connection, the benefits will be much greater.

Catalog Import

Mendeley Desktop matches papers you import to entries in our catalog which combines data from users and other sources, providing readership statistics, popular tags and other information for papers. In Mendeley Desktop 1.13 we’ve added an Update Details option to import data from the catalog into your Mendeley library. This should save you time when you come to cite the paper. To use it, just select a group of entries in your library, right click and select Update Details:

md-113-win-update-details-1-cropped

Mendeley will then refresh the details with the latest version of the entry from our catalog:

md-113-win-update-details-2-cropped

Hit the ‘View research catalog entry for this paper’ link to see more about the paper on Mendeley. Where the author is on Mendeley themselves and has uploaded the paper to their My Publications folder, you can also connect with them:

md-113-win-update-details-catalog-cropped

Early access to new Mendeley features

If you’d like to get early access to new Mendeley releases, you can opt-in to our preview releases via Help -> Check for Updates -> Opt-in to Experimental Releases in the app. The current preview release is a bug-fix update which addresses several of the top causes of crashes in the app.

New for Developers

This release of Mendeley Desktop is built entirely upon our new API which is also available for public use. Unlike our previous public API, the new platform provides access to all of the data which is displayed in Mendeley Desktop including documents, folders, annotations, file attachments and metadata lookup. If you want to build your own tools that use Mendeley’s data, check out our developer portal.

Mendeley Advisor Writes a Book About Mendeley

joaobernardinomdly

We had another first in the history of Mendeley this year: a Mendeley book! Mendeley Advisor Jacques Raubenheimer wrote a user guide to Mendeley, which he said grew organically out of a desire at his university for training guides to various softwares. We profiled Jacques as our February Advisor of the Month, and asked him about the book.

 

Why did you decide to write a book about Mendeley?

I got started using Mendeley because during my PhD I used another program that was discontinued, so I was in the market for new reference management. At the same time, I had this computer background where I was teaching people to use Mendeley, Excel, Powerpoint, and so on. So people asked me to recommend referencing software and I recommended Mendeley. And then I had to do training and needed training material, then I started writing and thought, well, there is a need for this, so write a bit more and make a book!

 

I have to ask, Is Mendeley so complicated you need an entire book?

Firstly, I think one of the things I notice is people try to use a software program for what they want to get done and they don’t realize what they could do with it. So yes, I don’t think the average Mendeley user needs the book but I think most Mendeley users could benefit from it because it could show them things Mendeley can do that they might not have been aware of.

 

How did you end up working with members of the Mendeley team?

When I started doing the training, I saw the Mendeley Advisor Program and I realized it would help me with doing the training. So I registered as an Advisor and started using the Advisor Forum, and a lot of the development team is actually active there. Here and there I had questions and I took the liberty of asking them questions. I haven’t had privy information, so there might be some inaccuracies in the book, that’s my own responsibility, but they’ve been helpful if I ask or send a question, which is great.

 

What would you change about Mendeley?

Well, read the book, I have a list of recommendations (laughs). For me, the big thing I would for Mendeley to do, and I think they’re working on this, is to clean up the research  library, there are a lot of duplicates. And then of course, though it doesn’t apply to me, a lot of Mendeley users are asking for the Android version, and I know they are working on that.

 

Where can I get the book?

Amazon is the main seller. In South Africa it is in other stores, but it is on all local Amazon bookstores, such as Amazon.fr, Amazon.au

 

So what’s next?

The big challenge is to try and get the book on the Kindle which is not that simple. If it was just a text book I could’ve done it already but there are a lot of graphics and they don’t render so well on the Kindle. And then the Mendeley team is keeping me busy, because, since the book has come out, a new version of Mendeley has been released, so my hope is to incorporate those changes and maybe have a second edition next year.

New Release: Literature Search from within Mendeley Deskop

drgunn10 Comments

[Editor’s Note–We thought you’d like to know: this 2013 post is a bit dated. Find Mendeley’s updated search features here, and info about Mendeley’s other features in the Mendeley Guides.]

Often the most impressive thing about a new software release is infrastructural and not immediately apparent, but not this time! In our latest release, we have added one of our all time most requested features – literature search from Mendeley Desktop. Also included in this release are a few improvements to how Mendeley Groups work, making it easier to collaborate with others using Mendeley.

LitSearch

We’ve always had the vision of Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Web working as parts of a whole, but there have been some gaps, perhaps most notably how research discovery works. For example, to search your existing collection of research, you’d use Mendeley Desktop, but to search for new research in Mendeley’s catalog, you would go to the website. With the latest release, you’ll see a new section in the folder tree in the left pane. Where there was previously a division between My Library and Groups, there’s now a new section for discovery tools, hosting a literature search tool and Mendeley Suggest, our research recommendation service which learns about your academic interests and recommends new research specifically for you. There will be more discovery tools coming to this space, but for now let’s focus on how to use catalog search from Desktop.

Read More »

Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 Released

Robert Knight10 Comments

Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.  For existing users, you can get it by starting (or restarting) Mendeley Desktop and accepting the update prompt.

Highlights of this release:

  • The new citation editor introduced for Word on Windows in the previous release is now also available for users of  OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word for Mac.  There is no longer a need to go back to Mendeley to select a publication to cite.  Instead you can just click Insert Citation (or press Ctrl + Cmd (⌘) + I on Mac) and type in keywords from the title, authors or publication of the work you wish to cite.

    • Open Office

    Mac

  • You can now export the sticky notes on a PDF as an annotation report in PDF format, with or without the content of the article itself.  When viewing a PDF in Mendeley, go to File -> Export PDF with Annotations.

  • Sharing PDFs with colleagues is now easier, whether they use Mendeley or not.  Select a document and click the ‘E-mail Documents’ button on the toolbar to send an article via email to one or more people.

In addition, there have been improvements to app startup time, citation formatting, RIS import, EndNote XML import/export and Linux desktop integration, plus bug fixes and stability improvements.

For more details, see the complete list of changes.

If you have a feature, change or bug fix that you particularly want to see soon, please visit our feedback forum and add your votes.

Ubuntu users: Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9 was released for Ubuntu/Debian last week.  Mendeley Desktop 0.9.9.1 has been released today to fix crashes specific to the Ubuntu version that some users encountered when the file organizer was enabled.

Mendeley is now more social: featuring collaborative groups, in-app tutorial, & updated citation styles.

drgunn17 Comments

This week we have released a new version of Mendeley with some major updates. The major new feature in Mendeley 0.9.8.1 is public collaborative groups.

What are groups?

Groups are a simple way for you to collaborate with your colleagues to create a shared collection of documents. Groups allow members to put together a list of papers and share notes. There are three types of groups:
Read More »

Mendeley Desktop v0.9.7 Released

Ricardo Vidal11 Comments

If you have opened Mendeley Desktop since yesterday, you will have noticed that we have a new major release available and ready for auto-update.

Among the new features and improvements we would like to mention the re-designed Document Details pane on the right-hand side.

Mendeley PDF and side pane document details

Also new to this release is the ability to upgrade your Mendeley account. By upgrading your current free account (which will always be free!) to one of our premium options, you have access to more Web space for your personal and shared collections and the possibility to collaborate with larger groups.

Mendeley upgrade plans

Overall, there have been a lot of improvements made both on the interface and functional level with clearer dialogs and information display. For our Mac users, there have been quite a few UI improvements too and the Cmd+H shortcut properly hides the window!

This release includes a few bug fixes, improvements on existing features such as faster syncing and better sticky notes, and introduces some important new features. The release notes can be seen here.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support.

Mendeley Desktop 0.9.6.3 Released

Robert Knight8 Comments

Already live via auto-update since last week but we just wanted to let everyone know about this minor update which amongst other things improves the look and feel of the toolbar on Mac. It also addresses several problems with annotation syncing, problems installing the Word plugin on some systems and general stability.

Further user interface improvements are planned for the next release so rest assured that this is just the beginning. Here is the complete list of changes for this release:

New Features and Improvements
  • (Mac) Improved the look and feel of the toolbar on Mac.
Bug Fixes
  • (Windows) Fixed ‘Invalid procedure call’ error when working with some Word documents which contain Mendeley-generated citations.
  • Fixed several sporadic crashes related to the search and de-duplication features.
  • Fixed several sync errors which could occur when syncing annotations.
  • Fixed several crashes related to the Word/OpenOffice/Mac Word plugins.
  • Fixed several crashes related to the notification bar.
  • Fixed several crashes related to importing PDFs which are already in your library.
  • Fixed annotation creation times being displayed incorrectly in timezones outside of GMT.
  • Fixed sticky notes not being exported correctly via File -> Export with annotations.
  • Added a limit to the number of citations that are extracted from a single PDF and reduce the number of citations extracted with poor-quality metadata.
  • Reduced memory usage when handling large file attachments.
  • Fixed ‘LinkToMendeleyVba2.dll not found’ message on some Windows PCs.
  • Made database updates safer when installing new versions of Mendeley Desktop.
  • Fixed the problem where Document Details hide/show toggle in menu did not always work correctly.
  • Fixed sticky notes not being restored when restoring backups.
  • Fixed annotation syncing problems when file organizer is enabled
  • Fix a freeze during the ‘Downloading files’ syncing step.
  • Preserve author ordering correctly when importing from Zotero.
  • (Mac) Fixed crash when entering accented characters (eg. umlauts) in authors field in Document Details tab.
  • (Mac) Included more detailed information in crash reports sent from Mendeley Desktop.
  • (Mac) Fixed crash when importing some corrupted PDFs.
  • (Mac) Experimental support for international versions of Microsoft Word for Mac.
  • (Linux) Fixed README file being installed to /usr in Ubuntu version.

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum at http://feedback.mendeley.com. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support.

Mendeley v0.9.6.1 released

victorhenning15 Comments

We’re happy to announce several new features and important upgrades in this latest release. The most important ones are:

Bibliography generator plugin for Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac:

bibliography-generator

This has been one of the most frequently requested features by our Mac users – now it’s here! Therefore, bibliography creation is now supported in Word and OpenOffice on all three platforms (Win, Mac and Linux). It’s just the first iteration, so we’ll continue to work on it and add more functionality. Please let us know what you think at http://feedback.mendeley.com.

Collaborative PDF annotation using sticky notes and highlights:

annotationsync

This has been a repeated request by research groups, labs and departments using Mendeley. PDF sticky notes and highlights are now synced with Mendeley Web, meaning that in Shared Collections you can now see each of your colleagues’ annotations separately and color-coded. In addition, there’s a major upgrade to the PDF viewer – it will now render the displayed PDF document instantly, no more pre-caching!

XMP metadata now extracted from PDFs:

This is a behind-the-scenes upgrade – Mendeley will now read embedded XMP metadata from PDFs where available (Nature and Elsevier journals, among others, now provide this routinely), boosting the metadata extraction quality. Even where there is no embedded XMP metadata, the algorithms for detecting authors and titles have also been improved.

Because of necessary changes to our server architecture, older Mendeley Desktop versions are required to upgrade to this latest beta version to continue using Mendeley’s online features – we’ll try not to make a habit of doing this.

Here is the full list of improvements and bug fixes:

New features
  • PDF annotations are now synchronized with Mendeley Web. In shared collections multiple users can add notes or highlights to documents.
  • Added an importer for Ovid Reprints/Medlars format files.
  • PDF import will make use of embedded XMP metadata if it is present and appears to be accurate.
  • (Mac) First version of Mac Word plugin. Please note: Currently the Mac Word plugin supports Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac. Word 2004 and earlier are not yet supported.
Improvements to existing features
  • Added keyboard shortcuts for selecting, highlighting and adding notes.
  • Newly imported documents are highlighted after import.
  • The updater will now ask for the administrator password if necessary during update installation on Linux and Mac.
  • Added ‘Copy LaTeX Citation’ action to documents list right-click menu.
  • Improvements to accuracy of automated author and title extraction from PDFs.
  • Add the ability to drag-and-drop any file type into Mendeley Desktop. If the file type is not supported by one of the importers then a new document is created with the file attached.
  • Smoother scrolling in PDF viewer.
  • ‘Search by Title’ and DOI lookups will now retain the full names of authors if the lookup comes back with only initials if the initials and the full names agree.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a recent problem with links between new documents and file attachments being lost for some users when syncing and a message warning that recently synced documents had been deleted on Mendeley Web.
  • Fixed crashes when exiting full-screen mode in PDF viewer.
  • Fixed red border around PDF content on PowerPC Macs.
  • Fixed local library data not being migrated correctly when changing email address in Mendeley Desktop.
  • Added additional verification of backups before restoring to web in the ‘Restore Backup’ feature.
  • File space usage shown in Preferences dialog did not update after syncing.
  • Incorrect progress messages were shown in the status bar when importing a PDF.
  • Fixed problem where starting a ‘Search by Title’ lookup for one document and then switching to another document before the results came back would apply the changes to the wrong document.
  • Fixed crash when performing DOI lookups in ‘Add New Document’ dialog.
  • The PDF viewer no longer creates temporary copies of opened PDF files on disk.
  • Fixed problem where only the first page of certain multi-page PDFs were shown in the viewer.
  • Fixed problem where search in a PDF viewer tab would not find matches on the last page of the PDF.
  • Fixed file organiser renaming failing on Windows for documents where the title, authors or publication name contained double quotes.
  • If uploading a file to Mendeley Web fails because the file is too large, the sync now continues uploading other attachments.
  • Fixed a problem which could cause Mendeley Desktop to loop continuously during sync.
  • Fixed PARSEFAILED error when syncing if certain characters appeared in imported documents.
  • Fixed long delay when opening the citation style browser.
  • Fixed long delay when opening the Tools -> Options menu on some systems.
  • Fixed incorrect documents being shown when searching for certain tags.
  • Fixed error about LinkToMendeleyVba.dll not being found on some Windows systems.
  • Fixed various crashes when syncing after removing shared collections on the web.
Feedback and Support

If you have suggestions for improvements please let us know by visiting the feedback forum at http://feedback.mendeley.com. If you encounter any problems using Mendeley or have questions to ask please e-mail support@mendeley.com. Thanks!