Item: Mendeley
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Mendeley

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a graduate student, I use Mendeley both individually, managing references for my own research, and as part of a group of 4-5 research staff. I've used Mendeley to manage >800 citations across the systematic review pipeline -- from downloading titles and abstracts, screening titles and abstracts using multiple reviewers (though group folders), and ultimately full-text review and markup. I also used Mendeley for a range of academic work to archive and index my needed sources.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy to use interface
The use of font size and style makes information easily discoverable within the article previews
Drag-and-drop functions make article indexing particularly simple

Cons

Syncing errors when using multiple devices occur infrequently (but still too often), leading to lost work and retrieved articles
Mendeley's servers sometimes are down, which prevents group work from being conducted on multiple machines through group folders

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Zotero

I now use Zotero, and prefer Zotero. Mendeley's occasional glitches caused too much stress for this busy grad student. The research team I joined already used Zotero, so making the shift to the new software was based on group needs.

Other Software Used

Zotero

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are planning on using a citation manager on a single device for solo citation management, Mendeley is perfectly suited to your needs. If you need to do work on multiple machines or as part of a collaboration, I think Mendeley has some work to do before it is right for you.

Comments

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Mendeley = Mostly Okay