Time to switch gears
January 10, 2024
Time to switch gears
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Mendeley
We used to use Mendeley to handle our literature review and share notes
- Search in pdf (former version, not current)
- Search in pdf (does not exist in current version)
- Don't lock your annotations within their proprietary format
- Offline use (does not exist in current version)
- Support and answer to users
- We're now loosing time switching all our notes from Mendeley to alternative reference time
In ~2014 I and our Lab chose Mendeley over Zotero because it had more functionalities (annotate directly in pdf) and being a commercial product it might have had more support.
Ten years have passed and it turns out that there was never support (latest versions of Mendeley Desktop did not add any extra feature over the 2014+ one, and the newest Mendeley Online Manager actually regressed extremely (!!) ) ; meanwhile Zotero, despite being only open-source supported, caught up on the features (and has inline pdf annotation).
None of these Reference Manager softwares are really satisfying when it comes to collaboration & shared annotations (compared to shared experience on writing software like Gdocs or Word 365), but at least Zotero is on a positive path while Mendeley is clearly regressing as years pass by, so it's time to switch gears
Ten years have passed and it turns out that there was never support (latest versions of Mendeley Desktop did not add any extra feature over the 2014+ one, and the newest Mendeley Online Manager actually regressed extremely (!!) ) ; meanwhile Zotero, despite being only open-source supported, caught up on the features (and has inline pdf annotation).
None of these Reference Manager softwares are really satisfying when it comes to collaboration & shared annotations (compared to shared experience on writing software like Gdocs or Word 365), but at least Zotero is on a positive path while Mendeley is clearly regressing as years pass by, so it's time to switch gears
Do you think Mendeley delivers good value for the price?
No
Are you happy with Mendeley's feature set?
No
Did Mendeley live up to sales and marketing promises?
No
Did implementation of Mendeley go as expected?
No
Would you buy Mendeley again?
No