Mendeley is a combination of a desktop application and a website which helps you manage, share and discover both content and contacts in research.

Our software, Mendeley Desktop, offers you:

• Automatic extraction of document details (authors, title, journal etc.) from academic papers into a library database, which saves you a lot of manual typing! As more people use Mendeley, the quality of the data extraction improves.
• Super-efficient management of your papers: "Live" full-text search across all your papers – the results start to appear as you type! Mendeley Desktop also lets you filter your library by authors, journals or keywords. You can also use document collections, notes and tags to organize your knowledge, and export the document details in different citation styles.
• Sharing and synchronisation of your library (or parts of it) with selected colleagues. This is perfect for jointly managing all the papers in your lab!
• More great features: A plug-in for citing your articles in Microsoft Word, OCR (image-to-text conversion, so you can full-text search all your scanned PDFs) and lots more new features being worked upon.

Our website, Mendeley Web, complements Mendeley Desktop by offering you these features:

• An online back up of your library: Store your documents in your account and access them from anywhere through your browser.
• Detailed statistics of all things interesting: You can upload your own publications to your research profiles, then track the evolution of your readership. How often are your papers downloaded? How often are they read? From which academic disciplines and geographic regions do your readers come from? Additionally, there are detailed statistics for each academic discipline and research topic. Who are the up-and-coming authors in your discipline? Is the interest in a research topic growing or declining? What are the most widely read papers on a specific subject?
• A research network that allows you to keep track of your colleagues' publications, conference participations, awards etc., and helps you discover people with research interests similar to yours.
• A recommendation engine for papers that might interest you, but are not yet in your library! Based on what you know already, what should you read next? Coming soon

A quick and free registration on our website (it only takes one minute, really!) is necessary to access a number of online features that really enhance your Mendeley experience:

• Automatic retrieval of document details, abstract, keywords for your PDF collection from a number of external databases, e.g. CrossRef, PubMed, Google Scholar, arXiv.
• One-click import from online bibliographic databases, e.g. ISI Web of Knowledge, ScienceDirect, EBSCO, ACM, IEEE etc.
• Networking and sharing documents with colleagues.
• Synchronize your research paper library across multiple PCs and manage it online through a web browser.
• Access to research trends and statistics about the top papers, authors and journals in your academic discipline.

The straight answer would be yes and no. Yes, it's free, because: Everything you get when you sign up to Mendeley is completely free and will always remain free - including the features described in What is Mendeley?

No, it's not completely free, because: At a later point in time, we will expand upon the existing features and introduce additional ones for professional users – these will be available for a (very reasonable) fee.

The chemists and biologists among you may have already deduced from whom we derive our name: Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (alternatively spelled Mendeleev), who developed the periodic table of elements, and Gregor Mendel, who is often called the "father of modern genetics".

We liked the analogies: Just as Gregor Mendel studied the inheritance of traits in plants, Mendeley will enable you to trace how ideas and academic theories evolve and cross-pollinate each other. Dmitri Mendeleyev formed the periodic table based on the properties of known elements, then used this data to predict the properties of elements yet to be discovered - and Mendeley will help you discover new literature based on the known elements in your library.

That was the short version. If you're interested, here's the full story of how our name evolved from B-movie monster to Mendeley.

Mendeley Desktop runs natively on Windows (32 and 64bit), Mac (PPC32 and i386 with OSX 10.4 or later) and Linux (x86_64 and i386). On some Windows Vista 64bit machines, there might be a few problems, but we're working on those.

We'll try to support other operating systems and architectures on request - just .

Yes, you can change the privacy level of your profile in your account settings.

We've designed Mendeley so that setting up your library is almost as painless as sunshine and kittens. It does initially require a few minutes of your time, but it's worth it. Once your library is set up, Mendeley makes your research much more efficient instead of slowing you down. Here's how it works:

After you've installed Mendeley Desktop on your computer, you simply drag PDFs into the Mendeley library. The automatic recognition starts to run and extracts the document details (and as more people use Mendeley, the better the recognition will become; also see How does the automatic recognition work?). In the best case, that's it – you can start using your library! In the worst case, you may have to correct some recognition errors manually. But even then, Mendeley has an auto-complete feature which starts to suggest author and journal names as you type.

Afterwards, it's completely effortless. You can full-text search all your documents, tag and annotate them, and automatically synchronise your library with your Mendeley Web account. The content, statistics, and article recommendations on Mendeley Web will be specifically tailored to you based on your existing library – no additional work is required.

1. The contents of the PDF are analyzed and Mendeley tries to 'guess' which text constitutes the authors, title and other metadata. The accuracy of this step will depend on factors such as the complexity of the article's layout.
2. Mendeley looks for identifiers such as DOIs and Arxiv IDs in the paper.
3. Mendeley sends the extracted metadata and any identifiers found to Mendeley Web which in turn queries various online sources, such as Arxiv, PubMed and CrossRef for more accurate data. If better quality metadata can be found online it is used, otherwise the document details extracted from the contents of the PDF are used.

The extraction process is imperfect but we are working to improving the quality of the automatic extraction and the comprehensiveness of the data available on Mendeley Web.

No, you can easily import your existing library database. Mendeley currently supports importing and exporting EndNote XML files, RIS files (the standard format of many academic databases) and BibTeX files.

• See the How do I import my existing references from EndNote entry for information on importing references from EndNote
• See the How do I import my existing references from Zotero entry for information on importing references from Zotero

No. We're researchers ourselves, so we know how important it is to be able to have control over your data. You own your data, so we will never lock it in, and you will always have the option of exporting it in the most common formats (currently, that is EndNote XML, RIS and BibTeX). For more information, also see What about Privacy?

Perform the following steps to activate document synchronization with CiteULike, so documents you add to your CiteULike account will be imported to Mendeley automatically:

• On your settings page, scroll to the bottom and enter your CiteULike username. Then click OK, and allow any pop-up blocking messages displayed by your browser — if any.
• You will be taken to an activation message on CiteULike's site — confirm this action.
• This will take you to your Edit Profile page with a check-box displayed next to Enable Mendeley. You will find this at the bottom of the form, highlighted. Click Update Profile to save this.
• You will now see your CiteULike profile page. Don't worry if you don't see any confirmation — this is normal. The synchronization is now set up successfully.

You can enable, or disable, Mendeley synchronization by going to your Edit Profile page on CiteULike, and checking, or unchecking, the check-box labelled Enable Mendeley. If you don't login to Mendeley once every 30 days, this sync will be disabled. You can re-enable it by re-checking this box.

1. In EndNote, select the references that you want to import into Mendeley, and click File > Export...
2. In the window that appears, there is a box labeled 'Files of type:', in that box select 'XML (*.xml)'
3. Choose a name for the file and click the 'Save' button
4. Open Mendeley and click File > Add Files
5. Select the file which you exported from EndNote and click Open

Mendeley Desktop now supports importing your documents directly from Zotero. To do this, you'll need to install Mendeley Desktop onto the same computer as where you have Zotero installed.

Once done, open up Mendeley Desktop and go to Tools > Options (or Mendeley Desktop > Preferences if you're on a Mac) and select the Zotero / CiteULike tab. From here, just enable the checkbox for Zotero integration. Mendeley Desktop will attempt to automatically locate your Zotero database, however you can choose to use an alternate Zotero database if desired.

Once you've clicked Apply, all of your existing documents from Zotero will be imported into Mendeley Desktop, and any future items you add to Zotero should find their way into Mendeley Desktop automatically.

No! We take your privacy very seriously. No one will be able to see the contents of your library, unless you explicitly share it with them. Also, no personal information or data about your ongoing research will ever be published on your research profile, unless you yourself choose to do so.

Mendeley only aggregates document details and statistics from the individual users' accounts anonymously (see the illustration below). Nothing about your personal data can be inferred from the aggregated data. As a user, you and everyone else will benefit from this anonymous aggregation because it

• improves the automatic document details extraction,
• allows you unprecedented insights into the statistics and research trends of your academic discipline,
• will help to create the world's largest academic database, open and accessible to everyone.

Should you disagree with this policy or be worried about something, please do not hesitate to . We pledge to you that you own your data, and that you can always delete it from our servers completely – no records whatsoever will be kept. For more details, please also see our Privacy Policy.

Yes, in the vast majority of cases this is not a problem at all. To quote the EPrints Self-Archiving FAQ:

Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual property. The author holds the copyright and is free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as he sees fit. For example, the pre-refereeing preprint can always be legally self-archived.

Self-archiving of one's own, non-plagiarized texts is in general legal in all cases but two. The first of these two exceptions is irrelevant to the kind of self-archiving BOAI is concerned with, and for the second there is a legal alternative.

Exception 1: Where exclusive copyright in a "work for hire" has been transfered by the author to a publisher -- i.e., the author has been paid (or will be paid royalties) in exchange for the text -- the author may not self-archive it. (...)

Exception 1 is irrelevant [for this case, which is concerned] only with peer-reviewed research, for which the author is paid nothing, and no royalty revenue or author fee is expected, sought, or paid.

Exception 2: Where exclusive copyright has been assigned by the author to a journal publisher for a peer-reviewed draft, copy-edited and accepted for publication by that journal, then that draft may not be self-archived by the author (without the publisher's permission). (...)

Of the nearly 10,000 journals surveyed over 90% are already "green" (i.e., they have already given their official green light to author self-archiving: 62% for postprints, 29% for preprints). Many of the remaining 9% "gray" journals will agree if the author asks.

To create a shared collection - simply open up Mendeley Desktop, select "Create Collection..." under the "Shared Collections" heading in the left sidebar and enter a name of your new shared collection.

You can invite or remove its members, as well as edit synchronization options, from the collection's settings panel.

Adding more than 10 members to shared collections will be a premium feature in the near future. Since we don't offer premium accounts at the moment we can increase the limit of your shared collections on an individual basis. Please with your username (e-mail address), the name of the collection, and the number of people you would like to share it with.

Once we introduce premium accounts (we will give notice well in advance) admins of shared collections with more than 10 members won't be able to invite any new members until they subscribe to a reasonably priced premium account.

Mendeley Web accounts are currently limited to 500MB of space for uploading PDFs and other files you have attached to your references. We will be offering larger quotas in the future as part of a premium feature package.

If you find yourself running out of space, please send us an e-mail at .

• A copy of your verbose log.
  

  Mendeley has a facility to generate to a 'verbose log' which includes all the data sent to and received from Mendeley Web during a sync. In order to get Mendeley Desktop to generate a verbose log file, you need to run it with the "--verbose-log" command line option.

  To use this option in Windows:

  1. Create a new shortcut to Mendeley Desktop
  2. Right click on it, and select 'Properties'
  3. Change to the 'Shortcut' tab
  4. At the end of the "Target" box, add " --verbose-log"
     For example, the target box may contain something like: "C:\Program Files\Mendeley Desktop\MendeleyDesktop.exe" --verbose-log
  5. Close and run Mendeley Desktop through that shortcut

  To use this option on Mac OS X:

  1. Open up an instance of Terminal.app
  2. Navigate to where Mendeley Desktop is installed by entering: cd /Applications/Mendeley\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/
  3. Run Mendeley Desktop like so: ./Mendeley\ Desktop --verbose-log

  Once open, try to perform a sync, wait for the error message to reappear and then close Mendeley Desktop. Now, locate your "log.txt" file, and send this to .

  Where the "log.txt" file is stored varies from operating system to operating system. In order to locate yours, please follow the corresponding value.

  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mendeley Ltd\Mendeley Desktop\
  • Windows Vista / Windows 7: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Mendeley Ltd.\Mendeley Desktop\
  • Mac OS X: /Users/<Your username>/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/
  • Linux: ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley Ltd./Mendeley Desktop/



• A few details on your computer
  

  We'll need you to just confirm for us the following information on your computer. The version of Mendeley Desktop you're using, the operating system, and the version of that.

You can run Mendeley Desktop with the following option to initiate a manual database repair.

• --repair-database

This option will try to repair your local database by removing all currently known invalid data. This will also run every ten startups and every startup after a synchronisation error.

To use this option in Windows:

1. Create a new shortcut to Mendeley Desktop
2. Right click on it, and select 'Properties'
3. Change to the 'Shortcut' tab
4. At the end of the "Target" box, add " --repair-database"
   For example, the target box may contain something like: "C:\Program Files\Mendeley Desktop\MendeleyDesktop.exe" --repair-database
5. Close and run Mendeley Desktop through that shortcut

To use this option on Mac OS X:

1. Open up an instance of Terminal.app
2. Navigate to where Mendeley Desktop is installed by entering: cd /Applications/Mendeley\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/
3. Run Mendeley Desktop like so: ./Mendeley\ Desktop --repair-database

If you still have problems with Mendeley Desktop after trying those option you can e-mail your local database files to and we will try to help. Your local DB is located here - open an explorer/finder window and navigate to:

• Windows Vista: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Mendeley Ltd.\Mendeley Desktop\
• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\«Your Name»\Local Settings\Application Data\Mendeley Ltd\Mendeley Desktop\
• Linux: ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley Ltd./Mendeley Desktop/
• MacOS: Macintosh HD -> «Your Name»/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/

If you have not entered an e-mail address into Mendeley Desktop, your database file is called "online.sqlite". If you have entered your email address, the local database is a file called "«yourEmailAddress»@www.mendeley.com.sqlite"; for example, "john.doe@provider.com@www.mendley.com.sqlite".

Additional notes: The database is stored in SQLite format. You can browse its contents using the SQLiteBrowser tool (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/) amongst others.

If are simply looking for peace of mind, you can backup the database files that Mendeley Desktop stores.

You can manually create a backup from within Mendeley Desktop by clicking Help in your menubar, and then by selecting Create Backup.... From here, you can specify where you wish to save your backup files.

If you're using a version of Mendeley Desktop prior to v0.9.4, or need to manually create a backup due to a problem with Mendeley Desktop, you can do so by performing the following:

Where your database files are stored varies from operating system to operating system. In order to locate yours, please follow the corresponding value.

• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mendeley Ltd\Mendeley Desktop\
• Windows Vista / Windows 7: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Mendeley Ltd.\Mendeley Desktop\
• Mac OS X: /Users/<Your username>/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/
• Linux: ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley Ltd./Mendeley Desktop/

Now that you have located where your database file is kept, you will want to copy this entire folder to somewhere safe. You can copy this to another computer, a USB stick, or another folder on your computer for safe-keeping.

Should you find yourself wishing to restore from a backup that you created previously with Mendeley Desktop, you can do this by first opening up Mendeley Desktop and ensuring that you're logged in as the user underwhich the backup was created. Once done, go to Help > Restore Backup > Other and navigate to where your backup is stored. Select this file, and follow the on-screen instructions that follow to restore your account to its previous state.

To restore your library from Mendeley Web, first open up Mendeley Desktop and then go to Help > Reset Mendeley Desktop. Upon clicking this, it will remove all of the data which you currently have stored within Mendeley Desktop and then restart Mendeley Desktop You can then re-enter your log in details and Mendeley Desktop will fetch all of the data from Mendeley Web back into Mendeley Desktop.

If you wish to confirm the state of your data on Mendeley Web before performing this, you can log into Mendeley Web, and then click on the Library tab at the top.

Mendeley Desktop supports a set of features that allow for you to perform much more powerful searches. You can use any number of these advanced queries within the search box in the top right of Mendeley Desktop.

You can narrow down which fields Mendeley Desktop should search for your specific keyword by using the following syntax, field:search term. Just replace the field with one of the values from the list below, for which fields you want to search.

• author, by, contributor, name: You can use any one of these keywords to specify that your term should only be searched for within a reference's authors, editors or translators. For example, author:Smith and name:Smith are both the same, and will search for references that have Smith in their authors, editors or translators.
• keyword: This will limit your search term to matching just the author's keywords for a document.
• publication: You can search amongst your references' journal titles or publications by using this keyword.
• tag: Using 'tag' will allow for you to search amongst documents that have a tag that contain your term.
• title: If you wish to search amongst just your reference titles, you can do so by using 'title'.

To match a phrase, as opposed to a single word, against a keyword, you can just wrap the search term in quotation marks ("). publication:"Science Weekly" would return all of your references that were published in "Science Weekly".

By default, if you enter more than one search term into Mendeley Desktop, it will search only for documents that match all of the terms entered. You can change this behaviour through the use of the OR keyword. By placing this in between two search terms, Mendeley Desktop will present a list of results that satisfy either of the search terms.

ponies OR "small horses" would provide a list of references that contain either "ponies" or "small horses" as opposed to only showing documents that have both of these terms.

You can also exclude documents that match certain terms from featuring in search results by placing a "-" before the search term. For example, entering horse -mare into the search box would return documents that feature "horse" but exclude those mentioning "mare".

If you no longer wish to use Mendeley Desktop, you can remove it entirely from your system by first checking that you've uninstalled any Word, or OpenOffice plugins you may have installed. To do this, open Mendeley Desktop, and from the Tools menu, select any options to Uninstall the respective plugins you may have installed.

On Windows, you can now go to the Start Menu and select All Programs > Mendeley Desktop > Uninstall. This will remove the Program Files directory for Mendeley Desktop.

On Mac OS X, you can simply drag the Mendeley Desktop application from your Applications folder to your Trash.

Note: If during the uninstallation process on Windows, one or all of the plugins fails to uninstall, you can remove them manually using the following procedures:

For the Microsoft Word plugin: Delete the file Mendeley-x.x.x.dot (where x.x.x is the version number) located in the following folder %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP.

For the OpenOffice plugin: Open OpenOffice, go to 'Tools->Extension Manager...' and remove the Mendeley entry.