Your bibliography database, created automatically

Extract citations from PDFs, index your research paper collection, and generate bibliography lists with Mendeley's automatic bibliography maker

Bibliographies, citations, and research paper organization made easy! Mendeley Desktop lets you set up your personal research paper database from multiple sources: Extract bibliographic data from PDFs automatically, grab citations and documents off web databases with a single click, and sync with other reference managers.

Automatic citation extraction from PDFs

You already have hundreds of research papers in PDF format – Mendeley helps you turn them into a bibliography database without cumbersome manual data entry.

• Citation extraction: Just drag & drop PDFs into Mendeley Desktop to start the automatic extraction of bibliographic metadata (authors, year, journal, volume, issue, etc.). Mendeley’s algorithms scan the PDF full-text, as well as using XMP metadata where available, turning a collection of research papers into a structured, sortable database.
• Keyword, full-text and bibliography indexing: Mendeley detects subject keywords within your PDFs, and indexes the full-text for quick searching across all documents.
• Research database lookup: Mendeley cross-checks your research paper collection against external databases like CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, or Google Scholar, using DOIs and other unique identifiers. When additional information, such as abstracts and keywords, are available, they are automatically added to your research paper library.

Import from & sync with other reference managers

Are looking to switch, or are using multiple reference management tools? Mendeley imports & exports the most important bibliography data formats and syncs with several browser-based citation-capturing tools, so you can keep your existing workflow and benefit from each tool’s strengths.

• Bibliography file import & export: Mendeley imports your existing BibTex, RIS, and EndNote™ XML libraries. These bibliography file formats are supported by EndNote, Reference Manager™, RefWorks™, and other traditional reference management tools.
• CiteULike & Zotero sync: Mendeley Desktop can continuously sync with your existing CiteULike and Zotero libraries. Whenever you add a citation there, it appears in your Mendeley library seconds later – so you can manage and backup everything in one place!

Bibliographies in APA, Chicago, MLA and many more citation styles

Generate bibliographies in more than 1,000 different citation styles, including Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style, Elsevier, Harvard Reference Format, IEEE, Modern Language Association (MLA), National Library of Medicine, Nature, Public Library of Science (PLoS), or Science.