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Mendeley – An Academic Social Network For Researchers And Educators

By sk
Published: Last Updated on 346 views

Doctor of Philosophy, or PhD is the highest degree that a person can earn. And, It's a dream for many aspirant students around the world. PhD isn't a typical college degree and it’s not so easy either. You need to dedicate most of your time for researching, reading, writing and re-rewriting. More importantly, you need to maintain a good relationship with your fellow researchers and your guides. If you're doing PhD scholar, I have a good news for you. You can now easily connect and collaborate with fellow researchers worldwide. Meet Mendeley, an academic social network specially designed for students, researchers, lecturers, educators and librarians. It can be used to connect, discuss and collaborate with millions of researchers all over the world.

If you are student, Mendeley helps you to,

  • Read, organize, and annotate documents in one place,
  • Follow your fellow or inspirational researchers worldwide,
  • Check what's new in the research field,
  • Search and apply for the jobs in popular institutions worldwide.

If you are a researcher, using Mendeley you can,

  • Build a fully searchable and easy-to-manage library to discover, read and cite papers,
  • Upload your data to a secure online location to access it from anywhere or share it with others,
  • Discuss current and trending topics, and collaborate with fellow researchers worldwide.

If you are a lecturer, Mendeley allows you to,

  • Join and collaborate with other lecturers and educators all over the world,
  • Create searchable library to facilitate course preparation,
  • Distribute and discuss the study materials and reading stuffs with groups.

If you are a librarian, using mendeley you can,

  • Help the lecturers, educators, and students to create and manage their libraries,
  • Create groups for students, researchers, lecturers to easily collaborate with each other,
  • Help your institutions publications with detailed statistics.

Hope you get a basic idea of what is Mendeley and how it helps to the students, researchers and lecturers. Let us go ahead and see how to install it and how to use it in real time.

Install Mendeley Desktop client

You can use Mendeley web service on your web browser regardless of any operating system. All you need is just a web browser with Internet connection. Also, there is a desktop client is available for your desktops and mobile devices. Mendeley desktop client allows you to share your files with your fellow researchers, and sync contents across different computers and devices. It is available for Linux (Ubuntu-only), MS Windows, Mac OS X, Android and iOS. As far as I searched in the official website, It seems Mendeley client is available only for Ubuntu operating system. The other Linux users will have to stick with the web service.

To install mendeley client in Ubuntu, download it from the following location depending upon the distribution's architecture you use.

Or, run the following command to download it from the terminal.

For Ubuntu 64 bit:

$ wget https://www.mendeley.com/repositories/ubuntu/stable/amd64/mendeleydesktop-latest

Ubuntu 32 bit:

$ wget https://www.mendeley.com/repositories/ubuntu/stable/i386/mendeleydesktop-latest

Once downloaded, double-click the package and click the Install or Install Package button to install Mendeley desktop app. During installation, Mendeley repository for Ubuntu will be added automatically. So you can update the application from time to time using command:

$ sudo apt-get install mendeleydesktop

After installing Mendeley desktop, you can either launch it from Menu or Unity dash. Or, simple run the following command from your Terminal to launch it.

$ mendeleydesktop

For Android, go to the Google play store, search and install it.

For iOS devices, you can install it from the App store.

How To Use Mendeley?

New to Mendeley? That's okay. It is quite simple to use.

You need to create a free account at Mendeley. To do so, go to the following link and fill up your details and you're good to go.

Once you logged-in to your Mendeley account, you can download and install the Mendeley desktop application as described above.

Mendeley dashboard

This is how your mendeley newsfeed looks like. From now on, you can make new connections, follow your lecturers, researchers and students and collaborate with them.

And then, create your own libraries and share it with others, collaborate and interact with your fellow researchers. It supports drag and drop feature, so that you can simply drag and drop the folders and files to the Mendeley desktop. Also, mendeley desktop allows you to easily import your exiting work and libraries from Endnote, Refworks, Zotero, Readcube or RefMe.

Connect with researchers worldwide

Mendeley will display the list of recommended connections depending upon your subject. Say for example, if you're a Computer science student, it will display the popular persons in Computer science field in your newsfeed. Of course, you can search people from other majors too.

To view any person's details, just click on them. You will see the complete details of the person such as academic details, where are they from, where are they studied, what are they doing/studying now, what are their published works, what are their research interests etc. If you find someone's profile opt for your research, you can follow them and send them message if you need any help regarding your research.

Upload your data online securely

You can upload your research data online securely, so that your followers can cite them, refer them, and notify if any corrections in your work etc.

To upload data, click on the Data button on the top menu bar in your dashboard. A new tab will open. Click Start uploading button. In the next window, enter the name of your publication, add contributors, enter the name of the institution/university where you're doing doctorate, categories for this data, description of the data you're uploading etc. Once you done, hit Publish button. Your data will be visible to all users globally. If you don't want to show your work to public, you can make it as private. There is an option for that too.

Mendeley premium service

You can store data upto 2GB for free in your Mendeley account. After 2GB, you need to go for premium service. It is not only increases the size, but also enhance your collaboration possibilities and boost your research. Menedely premium offers three plans namely Plus plan for 5 GB storage @ 4.99USD per month, Pro plan 10 GB space @ 9.99USD per month, and Max plan for unlimited space @ 14.99 USD per month. You can pick your plan that suitable for you. Visit the Mendeley storage plans page for more details.

As far as I observed, Mendeley works somewhat similar to LinkedIn professional network. But, unlike LinkedIn, mendeley is specially built for researchers, educators, lecturers and students. It's free to use. Just make it useful.

Have you used Mendeley lately? Great, share your thoughts about this app in the comment section below. Do you know any alternatives for Mendeley? Feel free to let us know.

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