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Mendeley: Get Started

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1. Join the Mendeley Academic Collaboration Network

Create an account and start interacting with over 4 million like-minded researchers.  

2. Import Your Reference Libraries from other Reference Managers such as Endnote and RefWorks

Download the Mendeley Migration Guide from this page to get started.

3. Join one of thousands of Public Groups or start your own Public Group.

Visit Mendeley's group directory to browse existing groups or create your own using our dedicated guide to public groups.

4. Create a Private Group and collaborate with colleagues by reading and annotating together.

Find out more in our dedicated guide to private groups.

5. Discover Readership Statistics about the paper you are reading.

Browse Mendeley’s crowd-sourced research catalog of millions of papers. 

6. Showcase your publication history.

Add your personal publications to your Mendeley profile using Mendeley Desktop, or by visiting your profile page.

7. Choose from one of 8000+ citation styles or create your own!

Use the CSL Editor to explore and modify existing styles. Automatically download journal styles from Elsevier's Author Guides.

8. Drag and drop PDFs automatically extract metadata about research papers.

Add new entries to your library in just a few seconds. Verify the extracted metadata manually, or automatically using a document identifier lookup.

9. Enable the File Organizer to bring order to your stored file.

Mendeley saves your references in the cloud, but you can also opt to download local copies and automatically rename the PDFs using a naming scheme you specify.

10. Mendeley Desktop is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Mendeley Web functions on all major browsers.

For more details, visit our dedicated resource center.

Get started with Mendeley by downloading the application from the Mendeley homepage.  Sign up requires first name, last name, and an email address.

To start, you should make sure you have the following three tools installed:

  • Mendeley Desktop - This is a standalone library that will contain your research articles (don't forget to sync it with Mendeley Web).
  • Mendeley's Citation Plugin - to use Mendeley with word processors, you will need to download the addon/plugin appropriate for your operating system
  • Mendeley's Web Importer - or the "Save to Mendeley" button

Also useful:

  • Mobile Mendeley - Mendely supports iOS and Android platforms

 

Make changes to your Mendeley Library on the web by clicking on the "Library" tab.
 

Note: Remember to sync in Mendeley Desktop to make sure your changes are active everywhere you access Mendeley.

Quick video introductions

   

Credits, etc.

For additional help, please contact your librarian and contact them.

This guide is adapted from Elsevier's Mendeley Guide.