Mendeley
Software & tools
Elsevier's reference manager offering PDF library management, annotation, 2 GB free cloud storage, private groups and Word citation integration.
Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network from Elsevier. It stores and organises references, annotates PDFs, and generates citations and bibliographies in Word or LibreOffice through its citation plugin.
Its integration with Elsevier's ecosystem is the main practical advantage: importing from Scopus and ScienceDirect is seamless, and Mendeley Data and the built-in recommender surface related work from the same platform. The PDF reader syncs annotations across devices.
Choosing between Mendeley and Zotero usually comes down to two considerations. Zotero is open source, captures from a wider range of websites and offers more flexible storage arrangements; Mendeley is stronger if your literature comes predominantly through Elsevier databases. Either is far better than managing references manually, and both are adequate for a full thesis.
Where it's used
- Supervisor–scholar shared reference libraries
- Citation management for thesis and papers
Software used
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