Mendeley

References to manage? Get Mendeley!

I have to admit that even before we began, I'd already made up my mind about many of the Sot 23 Things resources. I am a geek - I've written blogs & recorded podcasts already; I joined Facebook in 2007 and Twitter in 2009; and most of the things we've looked at so far I'd already tried out, even if I hadn't done much with them. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that I was asked to write instructions for a few of the "Things", I probably wouldn't have actually followed the Sot 23 Things programme.

But now I'm very glad I did. Because of Mendeley.

For sure, Mendeley fits into the category of "things I tried ages ago, but haven't looked at for ages" - so it's not that I hadn't heard about it. No, it's because revisiting this resource has come at a very opportune moment. In October I started an Open University degree in Computing & IT (I've long since harboured the desire to learn to program properly, I just haven't had the motivation to self-teach to the level I want to achieve).

The OU offers a couple of reference management options and, until now, I've been using RefWorks. It works reasonably well (but not as well as EndNote Web, for sure) - but in my last assignment I needed to three different citations from the same author and year... in Harvard (which I'm disappointed that we use - Vancouver is far superior, IMHO) you're supposed to reference them (Bloggs, 2013a), (Bloggs, 2013b) etc. And RefWorks couldn't handle it.

So I was starting to think that I'd need to invest in my own copy of EndNote - which was going to be over £70 if I waited until the autumn and the X7 version (the annual EndNote update cash cow is somewhat annoying). I had it in mind to investigate Mendeley - but whether I'd actually invest enough time and effort to do it justice, well that's debatable.

And then came Sot 23. I logged back into Mendeley and had a look around. Fair enough - it looked alright. I watched a few of the videos. Hmmm... it all seems to work quite nicely.

And then I discovered that I could download the OU Harvard style.

Suddenly, getting to grips with Mendeley took on a whole new level of importance. Call me shallow if you will, but now I had every reason to take this "Thing" rather seriously. And the more I investigated, the more I liked it. Here we go:

• The desktop application is pretty good. I can't say yet whether I think it's better than EndNote desktop or not - more investigation is required. But it's certainly very usable.
• The web application, on the other hand, is far better than EndNote Web. Much, much easier to use.
• At the moment, I think EndNote wins on the Word integration - the Mendeley equivalent of "Cite While You Write" doesn't have half the features that it's EndNote cousin. But I'll also acknowledge that EndNote CWYW has a number of bizarre "features" (i.e. bugs/design flaws) that Mendeley must be an improvement on.

And then you get to the...

Social Integration

...which is an area that EndNote hasn't even begun to explore.

In my mind, it's indicative of modern business/academic life. Big, old school organisations (like EndNote, like the University) just don't "get" social media. They don't understand how to use the new Web 2.0 tools, and don't think that sharing and integrating via the web is that important.

But organisations like Mendeley are built on Web 2.0 technology. They don't just use it - it's a fundamental part of why they exist. So Mendeley is more than just a platform for managing your references - you get to put up your own personal profile.

You can invite other members of your research group and you can share references and papers, and discuss them via Mendeley. So far, so standard.

But you can also join in with world-wide groups, discussing research topics of common interest. Let's say, for argument's sake, a group on "Open access and libraries". Now, all of a sudden, the social integration starts making a lot of sense - and you can see where Mendeley is doing very useful things that EndNote hasn't even considered.

So Mendeley received a very big "Thumbs Up" from me - I'll be investing more than a little time in this one for the next few years, I'm sure!