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MENDELEY : A free reference management software
Corresponding author: Dr Arkaprabha Sau, Sr. Medical Officer; Haldia Dock Complex; Kolkata Port Trust; E mail: arka.doctor@gmail.com
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Received: ,
Accepted: ,
How to cite this article : Sau A, Bhakta I. Mendeley: a free reference management software. J Comprehensive Health.2018;6(1):52-53
Introduction:
Referencing is a systematic way of acknowledging the source of information and enabling the readers to trace the ingenuity of the citation in any kind of written documentation. It is indispensable for any kind of scientific writings for publication purpose in journals or newsletters and presentation purpose in conferences or seminars. Budding researchers often face difficulties in managing their- text citations and corresponding references. It's not saying that modifying the citation and referencing styles manually for a particulars journal is a frustrating and annoying job, after being rejected by another journal on the previous occasion. Moreover, it became a nightmare to a post-graduate trainee/research scholar to arrange hundreds of in-text citations and corresponding references, when guide or supervisor asked to modify the manuscript with necessary addition or deletions, just before submitting the thesis or dissertation. The simplest way to deal with all those problems is to use a reference management software.
Reference management software:
The main functions of reference management software are to build and manage a digital library for a research work, containing supporting documents as a whole or just metadata and subsequently use this library to put appropriate in-text citations and to create a bibliography in a specified referencing style automatically. Some reference management software has to be purchased from its developer for personal use like EndNote X8 (US$249.95 for a single user) but some are free of costs like Mendeley, Zotero, and JabRef. A study conducted in 2013 by Diane L Lorenzetti and William A Ghali, identified that EndNote was the most commonly used reference management software among the researchers. A detailed comparison, done by Library department of Imperial College, London shows that there is not much difference between paid and free software, especially between EndNote and Mendeley. This comparison will be helpful also for the budding researchers to choose the appropriate one.
Mendeley: A free, powerful reference management software
It is a free, powerful cross-platform reference management software developed by Elsevier named after famous biologist Gregor Mendel and chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev. It was initially released in 2008 and the latest stable version released on 2016. Along with reference management, it also provides an online platform for sharing research works and collaborating with other researchers anywhere in the world. Mendeley desktop application is available for both Windows 7 and later, Mac OS 10.10 and later Linux operating system and Mendeley mobile application is available for both android and iOS platform to access and manage library on the go with real-time synchronization between the computer and mobile device. Mendeley Web Importer plugin is available for all major webbrowser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer to import documents and web pages directly into a web-based online library management system from academic databases like PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and online search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. This web-based online library management framework is the heart of the Mendeley referencing system which will be available to the researchers after signing up into the Mendeley web account with 2GB storage space. It is the backbone of real-time synchronization and data sharing between the web, computer, and mobile devices. Moreover, document or previous library (XML, BibTex, or RIS format) can be uploaded into this online library with just one click or drag and drop method. The most important feature is the Citation Plugin (Mendeley Cite-O-Matic) for Microsoft Word (Windows and Mac operating system) and Libre Office (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux operating system) which enables researchers to quickly and easily cite materials from Mendeley library within the manuscript during drafting- as well as automatically generating a full bibliography of the citations as per required reference style format, referenced in the paper. Best of all, it allows the researchers to completely restyle all of the references just by a couple of clicks. Referencing style can be modified, edited or created using web-based Citation Style Language (CSL) editor. At last, it is worthwhile to be mentioned that a detailed guideline to use this free, powerful, efficient and effective reference management software is available at https://www.mendelev.com/euides.
Conflicts of interest:
None declared
Financial Support:
Nil
References:
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