How To Use Mendeley Reference Manager (Complete Beginner's Guide)

in this video i'm going to show you everything that you need to know about using the mendeley reference manager so let's get straight into it so what is this software the mendeley reference manager as the name suggests is a reference manager software created by the publisher elsevier that's available for mac windows and linux machines and the great thing about it is that it is completely free it's also worth noting that mendeley have another software known as mendeley desktop which is still available to download but this is no longer being supported with updates since the mendeley reference manager is taking its number one spot to download the mendeley reference manager software you need to head on over to their website and i'll leave a link in the description below in the top right corner of the page you should see a download button when you select this you then have to select the correct option for your chosen operating system i'm using a windows machine for this tutorial so i'll choose to download this version once downloaded it's then a case of following the setup wizard to install the software to use mendeley you will need an elsevier account but don't worry this process is also free and it's easy to do to create an account go back to the mendeley website and select the create account option in the top navigation bar enter your email address and click continue then fill in the rest of your information including your name and a desired password then click the register button you should now have an elsevier account which can be used to log in to the mendeley reference manager software another thing i suggest that you do at this point is to install the mendeley web importer which is a free plugin for your internet browser that makes it really easy to save references you find online straight to your mendeley library the web importer is available for all major internet browsers including firefox chrome and safari and i'll leave links in the description for each one so you can download it yourself i'm using firefox for this demonstration so i'll install this so now we have everything that we need let's now open the software and take a look around when you first open the program you will probably be asked to log in so go ahead and enter your newly created elsevier account details inside of the mendeley reference manager you should see a sidebar to the left at the top there's an add new button where you can create a new reference entry add files from your computer or import a full reference library from elsewhere such as endnote under the add new button you should then see different sections of the library obviously this library is empty at the moment but it is here that you can toggle the view between all references those that are recently added are read references that you mark as a favorite or those that you have published yourself and at the bottom there is a trash area which will contain all the files that you delete from your library in the section below this there is collections you can think of collections as folders where you can manually drag and drop references into these are perfect for keeping your library organized and i'll explore collections in a bit more detail later on in this guide under collections you will also notice a private group section private groups are a bit like a shared library where you can share references and full-text documents to other members in your group and i'll also go into a bit more detail on this later within the main panel of the mendeley reference manager you will see all of the references and files in your library don't worry we will add some of your own very shortly to the top right you will find a search bar so you can quickly find a reference in your library as well as a filters option which can be used to filter references by authors and tags the last thing you should be aware of is the notebook in the notebook you can add your own comments in the form of pages as well as view comments that are embedded within multiple pdfs there's more on notebooks later alright so that's a brief overview of the program itself let me now show you how you can add references to the mendeley reference manager like most reference managers there are various ways that you can add references to your library with the mendeley reference manager these are manually add the listing yourself use an identifier to look up the metadata use the mendeley web importer to import references straight from your internet browser and upload a pdf which contains metadata to add a reference manually simply select the add new button and choose add entry manually in the new sidebar ignore the identifiers box at the top and simply fill in the rest of the boxes for this example let's say i want to add this journal article i found online i can just take the information on this web page and manually enter it into the mendeley reference manager i'll speed this process up for you once added you will then see the reference in the main window and if you'd like to see more information about the reference you simply select it and then go to the info tab in the new sidebar to the right so that's how you can add references manually what about adding references via an identifier the mendeley reference manager can read different types of identifiers and extract relevant information attached to it by looking online going back to my example of the review article i can see that this is a pubmed identifier code here so if i copy this i can then open the mendeley reference manager and select the add new button again then i will select the add entry manually but this time i will paste the identifier i just copied into this top box and then press the search button if successful the boxes underneath should be automatically populated with the relevant information you can then confirm these to add the reference to the library moving on let's take a look at importing references via the mendeley web importer with the web importer installed you should see the add-on button somewhere on your internet browser as mentioned i'm using firefox and you can see the mendeley web importer add-on here to use the web importer go to the page that contains the reference that you want to download to your library then simply select the web importer button when doing this for the first time you will be asked to log in using your elsevier account that you created earlier once logged in you should then see all the available references that you can download to your library from this page and if that reference has the full text pdf available the web importer will notify you it's then a case of selecting the appropriate reference and clicking the add to mendeley button once imported the web importer will notify you that the reference has been imported and if you switch to the mendeley reference manager software you will see the reference in your library as well as the associated pdf which can be downloaded and opened directly within the software the last main method of importing references into your mendeley library is to upload a pdf of that reference for example let's say i have the full text of a journal article on my computer most often these pdfs have metadata associated with them which can be used to populate the entry mentally simply select the add new button and then click the files from your computer option find the desired pdf and upload it using the attached metadata mendeley should then populate that entry for you the pdf will also be attached to the entry so that's how you can add references to your mendeley library let me now show you a few things about managing your library as you add entries to your library they will often have these green circles placed next to them this just indicates that these references are unread if you open the pdf attached to the reference this green circle will be removed and the entry will be marked as red you can also use the stars next to each entry to mark them as a favorite all favorite references can then be found in the favorites tab the recently added tab shows all references added to your library within the past 30 days and the recently read tab shows all references that you have opened the pdf for in the past 30 days another thing that you can do mentally is to add tags to your references tags are another way of organizing your references to view the tags on a reference simply select it to open the sidebar to the right and then click the info tab if you scroll down you will see a section called tags at the moment this reference doesn't contain any tags so let's add some to add a tag click the plus button then just type in and hit enter to add your own and this brings me nicely onto the filters function in mendeley what you can do is filter your reference library by tags and author names to do this select the filter button and then to filter by a tag select the tags tab and choose a desired tag doing so will then show only those references that have that specific tag you can also do a similar thing with author names let's now move on to removing a reference from your library deleting references is really easy simply choose the reference and then select the delete option in the bottom panel all deleted references can then be found when you click on the trash tab you can then select them and then choose the restore option to move them back into your library or you can select the delete permanently option to remove them from the trash area let me now go into a bit more detail on organizing your references into collections to create a new collection or folder simply select the new collection option then give your collection a name let's say i'm writing a phd thesis so i may want an introduction collection that contains all the references i want to use in my introduction section when you select your newly created collection you will see that it is currently empty to add references to your collection simply view all references in the library then either click and drag the desired references into the collection or select multiple entries and then choose the organize button and then select the add to collection option then simply check the collection you want to add the references to and press the add button another thing that you can do with collections is create sub collections to do this simply right click on a collection and select new collection you will then see a sub collection has been created which can further help organize your references moving on to private groups private groups enable you to share references and pdfs with other members for example let's say we want to share articles with colleagues for a journal club the process of creating a new private group is similar to creating a collection simply give the new group a name and press enter again go to your library and add any references you wish to add to your new private group by either click and dragging on them or by using the actions menu to take advantage of private groups you obviously need to invite other users to it to do this right click on the group and then select manage group then select the invite members button you can then add in email addresses of each person you would like to add to this group and know that private groups can hold 25 users once added users can each see a shared reference library let me now move on to the notebook feature which is a really useful tool inside the mendeley reference manager to access the notebook select the notebook button and this should open the sidebar to the right with the notebook tab selected you can add pages to your notebook by selecting the new page button these are great when you just want to jot down some general comments all you have to do is give the page a title and some content by switching to the annotations tab you can also add in notes about specific references for example say i want to add a note about this reference i can just select it and then add in a note in the general notes area this will then be attached to this specific reference another cool feature of the mendeley reference manager is the pdf annotations tool for those references that you have a pdf for in your library you can double click on them to open the pdf when viewing a pdf you can use the tools in the top left to add annotations for example i can choose a desired color that i want for my annotation then with the highlight text tool active i can highlight a piece of text inside the pdf you can also highlight specific areas of a document by using the highlight rectangle tool to change the color of an annotation simply click on it and choose a new color you can also choose to delete an annotation from this menu too as well as highlighting a document you can add your own comments to do this click the sticky note button and click on an area inside the pdf you can then type in your comment a cool thing about doing this is that if you open your notebook and then go to the annotations tab you can then view all the sticky notes in this reference and clicking on them will show that note inside the pdf so that's an overview of the mendeley reference manager and the basics of using it let me now show you how to create citations and a bibliography inside of microsoft word by using the mendeley reference manager to be able to do this you will firstly need to download the mendeley sites for microsoft word add-on and i'll leave a link in the description for this i'll be using microsoft word online for this demonstration but the steps should be similar for the standalone version of word after installing the mendeley site word add-on you should see a mendeley cite button either in the references tab or in a tab called add-ins if you select the mendeley site button you should see a sidebar to the right and when using it for the first time you'll be asked to log in once logged in your library should be synchronized so you can view all of your references to add a citation by using mendeley site select on an area in your document where you want to add the citation then in the sidebar use the search function and the drop down menus to find your desired reference to add the reference simply select it and then press the insert citation button the citation will now appear in your document if you want to add further references to this citation simply select it and then choose the add reference button in the sidebar it's then a case of finding the other reference and adding to it if you would like to remove a citation then just select the cross button so that's how you can add and remove a citation how about adding a bibliography or reference list to do this again select on the document where you want to add your bibliography then in the mendeley site sidebar select the more option and then choose insert bibliography you may get a message stating that the bibliography will be inserted at your cursor location so just click continue you should then see the bibliography has been created if you'd like to delete your bibliography you can simply press the delete key on your keyboard finally what about changing the style of your citation and bibliography to do this switch to the citation style tab in the mendeley site sidebar there are a few pre-downloaded styles that you can choose from if you want more styles press the select another style option at the bottom and use the search bar to find a desired style most journal styles can be found by simply searching for the journal name to install and use the style select it and choose update citation style so that's how you can use the mendeley site add-on to add citations and a bibliography into word before i finish i just wanted to mention that your mendeley reference manager account can be accessed directly through the mendeley website this is because your library is synced to your elsevier account and it's worth noting that you get two gigabytes of storage on the free plan with additional storage available for those that have a paid subscription to access your library online simply sign in to the mendeley website using your account details and then choose the library button you should then see a similar view as your mendeley reference manager software this is particularly handy when you want to access your library on a different device from where your mendeley reference manager is installed and with that that brings me to the end of this beginner's guide to using the mendeley reference manager if you found this video useful please leave a like it really does help support the channel if you've got a question pop it down in the comments below also consider subscribing for more weekly tutorials

Channel: Steven Bradburn

Views: 653,441

Keywords: mendeley reference manager tutorial, Mendeley, Mendeley Reference Manager, mendeley reference manager word plugin, mendeley cite tutorial, mendeley cite word, mendeley cite not working, how to use mendeley for citation and referencing, how to use mendeley reference manager, how to use mendeley for literature review, How to use Mendeley, how to add references in word mendeley, mendeley web importer, mendeley web importer chrome, mendeley web importer not working, mendeley desktop

Id: OzFHGFnAM2Q

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022