Mendeley icon
Mendeley icon

Mendeley

 290 likes

Mendeley helps manage and share academic knowledge: Mendeley Desktop is free academic software (Windows, Mac, Linux) for organizing and sharing research papers and generating bibliographies with 1GB of free online storage to automatically back up and synchronize your library...

Generate Bibliographies in Word and OpenOffice

License model

  • FreemiumProprietary

Country of Origin

  • NL flagNetherlands
  • European Union flagEU

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Online
3.2 / 5 Avg rating (6)
290likes
18comments
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Integrations

  1. Microsoft Word icon  Microsoft Word
  2. LibreOffice icon  LibreOffice
  3.  Browser
  4. Microsoft 365 Copilot icon  Microsoft Office

Features

  1.  Real time collaboration
  2.  PDF annotation
  3.  PDF support
  4.  References
  5.  Bibliography generator

 Tags

  • Library
  • papers
  • bibliography-management
  • citation-management
  • citation-maker
  • Academic
  • Research
  • pdf-organizer
  • research-network
  • Reference
  • collaboration
  • reference-apps
  • english-only

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Mendeley information

  • Developed by

    NL flagElsevier
  • Licensing

    Proprietary and Freemium product.
  • Pricing

    One time purchase (perpetual license) that costs $0 + free version with limited functionality.
  • Rating

    Average rating of 3.2
  • Alternatives

    78 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

Office & ProductivityEducation & Reference

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Our users have written 18 comments and reviews about Mendeley, and it has gotten 290 likes

Mendeley was added to AlternativeTo by Xavierman on Apr 20, 2009 and this page was last updated Apr 22, 2022.

Comments and Reviews

   
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Comment summary: Mendeley is praised for its multi-platform compatibility, free basic features, and user-friendly PDF management. It allows efficient reference management and integration with word processors, offering tools for academics. However, users mention issues like bugs, data encryption concerns, and high storage costs. Some prefer Zotero due to open-source advantages and better citation capabilities for unpublished sources. The missing PDF reference extraction feature in newer versions may return.
Top Positive Comment
akhilnichenametla
May 27, 2018
1

Although there are some bugs in Mendeley desktop and web import and also basic storage plan is very less, it provides all other features without bugging to take premium.

Top Negative Comment
tommygold
Oct 29, 2013
3

mendeley is really easy to use. and excellent retrieval of metadata. but: there is ONE big disadvantage. when you create comments in PDFs, mendeley does not export them. that means you cannot use PDFs and comments in other software. you are locked-in. source: http://www.docear.org/2013/10/14/what-makes-a-bad-reference-manager/ (i tried the export and it's true, comments in pdfs are exported in a crappy format).

i use zotero instead. not that easy to use but open source and excellent community. docear also looks nice.

superluminar
Jul 11, 2019
5

Mendeley got infamous for encrypting its local database, making switching to competing products more difficult. The claims of Elsevier, Mendeleys owner, in reaction to questions were perceived as "bizzare" and "Anti-Science"

[Edited by superluminar, January 17]

odici100
Dec 7, 2015
2

If you do a lot of archival research and/or citing of non-published sources (personal correspondence, manuscripts, etc.) in your work, I would not recommend Mendeley. It does not contain the fields you would need to properly cite that kind of material. Zotero is the best alternative I've found for that kind of reference/source management.

joeran
Oct 30, 2013
5

Since I believe that the comparison chart in em4020's review from August 2012 provides a slightly biased picture, I would like to introduce some more (slightly biased) comparison charts :-):

Chart made by Docear

Comparison chart by Colwiz

Chart by Qiqqa

Chart by Refworks

To those who didn't yet realize it: All these charts were created by the developers of the software tools being compared (also the one in em4020's review). I recently wrote about this problem in my Blog http://www.docear.org/2013/08/27/off-topic-which-one-is-the-best-reference-management-software-tool/

[Edited by joeran, October 30]

em4020
Aug 17, 2012
0

Comparison of Mendeley with Zotero

A complete Comparison you find on http://www.mendeley.com/compare-mendeley/

Thelle Christensen
Jul 29, 2012
1

I love Mendeley for creating and sharing references. A must-have tool for all University students.

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What is Mendeley?

Mendeley helps manage and share academic knowledge: Mendeley Desktop is free academic software (Windows, Mac, Linux) for organizing and sharing research papers and generating bibliographies with 1GB of free online storage to automatically back up and synchronize your library across desktop, web and mobile. Mendeley Web is a free research network which lets you manage research papers online, discover trends and connect to like-minded academics. Mendeley tracks usage data on over 40 million research papers in real-time, thus creating a network of people using and sharing millions of scholarly articles - helping to shift research into the 21st century world of collaboration and openness. Mendeley is engendering a revolution in the way research is conducted and disseminated, changing the face of science.

With Mendeley you can view and annotate PDF files. The PDF exported along with the comments can be readily viewed in Adobe's Reader.