Mendeley Desktop lets you organize your research, create bibliographies and collaborate online with other professionals.
The application is easy to install and you can start using it as soon as you register to the Mendeley website. The interface of the program is very intuitive. To add new PDF files to your library just drag an drop them into the main window of the program. The application will automatically detect document details, such as: authors, date, number of pages, abstract, keywords, advisor, tags, type of work and many others. Every time you add new documents to your library, you are able to synchronize it to your Mendeley web account. This way you will be able to share your research with other Mendeley users.
The program is able to open multiple PDF files in separate tabs saving precious time. Another important feature of the program is its ability to add annotations or highlights to your documents. You can easily save the annotations within your documents in order to print them. Mendeley Desktop is able to organize your PDFs by sorting them in multiple folder or categories allowing you to easily search across your research library.
On the Mendeley website you have access to millions of research documents and collaborate with other members. Mendeley is also knows as one of the biggest academic social networks.
Pros
- Self-explaining interface
- Free
Cons
- None
I used to rave about Mendeley. But since the new version and Mendeley Cite in Word, it's been nothing but issues. Firstly, neither the software or plug in work offline, so is no good if you want to work on the go. When you do sync (every time you add a ref), it's slow and unresponsive - and it changes some of the fonts in your doc every time! It no longer watches folders, so you have to add each new pdf manually to Mendeley. Duplicate references can't be deleted, so it's very confusing in your doc. The search function is limited. The formatting of Mendeley Cite is awful, as the graphics overlap with the buttons. Another issue with Mendeley Cite is that you can't manually edit references now. And references are flagged as spelling mistakes by Word, which never used to happen. I could go on but rather I'm changing my whole referencing system to another program.