Mendeley: An Online Software for Reference Management in Research

Abstract

Research is a systematic effort to gain newknowledge. A researcher has to collect a lot of existinginformation resources in the specific domain of knowledge forpersuing research. Due to Information and communicationtechnology most of the information resources are appearingnow in electronic format. The range of information resourcesvaries from e-books, e-journals, databases, images, powerpoint presentations, audio and video resources. After collectingthe resources, the researcher has to organize it in personalcomputers or on web for further study and consultation.Reference is a link or relationship between two objects inwhich one gives acknowledgement to other. Mendeley is anonline software for researchers not only to collect and storetheir items, but also to organize, tag them, save the resourcesand create citation and bibliography automatically in standardformats. Researchers can save their precious time by using thissoftware, which was earlier done manually and consumed a lotof time during the research process. The article introducesonline softwares for reference management i.e. Mendeley,Zotero and Endnote. It further highlights how Mendeley canhelp a researcher in creating personal digital library, referencemanagement, as a social networking site and the other facilitieswhich are very useful for academia and researchers. Thissoftware can be used free of cost up-to a certain limit ofstorage space on cloud.