Master the BEST Free Reference Manager (Mendeley Desktop, Mendeley Web Importer, & Mendeley Cite)

when it comes to helpful research tools mendeley reference manager sits among the top not only will it help you organize and streamline creating references and citations but it's free and it's user friendly matter of fact I'm about to show you just how user-friendly it is but I must disclaim that this is a longer review so do use a Time stance to navigate to the parts you need or let's face it when you get tired of hearing you talk now the first thing we need to do is install and set up the mendeley software as well as the two plugins mendeley web importer and mendeley site now mendeley web importer is a browser plugin that helps you import sources found on the internet or online academic databases directly into the mendeley reference manager on the other hand mendeley site is a Microsoft Word plugin that links your mendeley account to your word documents making it really easy to insert citations references and even your full bibliography so to get started you'll want to head over to mendeley.com where the first thing you want to do is create an account because you'll need it to sign into the software later on once you're finished with that go back to the mendeley home page where you'll want to select download from the top right corner this will bring you to the installation page where next you're going to select the option most appropriate for your operating system I'm using a Windows computer so we'll go ahead and select this right here this will start the installation process where now you'll follow the prompts until mendeley reference manager opens and asks you to sign into your account once you do so congrats because installation is officially complete now before we tear into this user interface let's go ahead and set up the plugins and this should be pretty easy to do note for example how I'm being prompted to download mendeley's site directly from the library if you don't have that option option number two is to use the tools section here at the top from there let's say we select mendeley web importer that's going to bring us to the web browser for the web importer installation page now if for some reason your tool section didn't have those options no worries head right back over to the home page where under section one you can click learn about the library in which you can tap over to the plugin you need in this case web importer and what's really nice is mendeley will actually match the download package to the web browser you're using as you can see I'm being offered Google Chrome so we'll go ahead and select this and just like before we'll follow the setup guide and let the installer do its thing now once it's finished you can check by coming up to the top right where your extensions are located and underneath you should see mendeley web importer listed so that's one down one to go meaning we need to head back over to mendeley and tab over to mendeley site from here go ahead and select get mendeley site which is actually going to bring you to the Microsoft app store where you can begin the installation process so we'll select get it now and then you should be prompted to log into your micro Microsoft account or select the account you're using what this does is it starts the process of linking the two accounts together and when it's finished you'll be prompted to open word which will populate a new Microsoft Word document and to make sure mendeley site was installed go ahead and select the references Tab and then you should see mendeley site over there on the right that means our mendeley is locked and loaded we're good to go although it's a little quiet in here so let's add some references you have five choices add manually use an identifier upload a PDF use the web importer Plugin or use the search for articles online tool let's start with manual to do this go ahead and select add new from the top left and then select add entry manually now we're going to ignore the identifier field for now so we'll start by selecting the reference type and it's important that you choose the correct reference type because it's going to determine the fields populated to you below next you're going to type in the title and it's important that you follow the exact formatting of the title on whichever Source you're using so it's formatted in your bibliography correctly later on next you have the authors the correct way to format the authors here is by typing out their last name first followed by a comma and then their first name to end it and if you're adding more than one author be sure to add them each in their own individual field from there go ahead and fill out the rest of the information in this case it's the source information pertaining to the journal article but once you're finished go ahead and select add entry from the bottom and you'll see it populated to the top of your library list now in all honesty manual entry is the most time consuming thankfully we have option two which is to use the identifier something like a DOI number or a URL link or even a PubMed ID so let's retrace our steps select add new add entry manually and then taking a look at the source we're citing we're gonna copy and paste the DOI number paste it into the identifier field and then check it out within a matter of seconds mendeley has populated all that same information and input it for us so we're going to select add entry and then now it's at the top of our list but now we have two of the same reference which is confusing and also there's a discrepancy between the last name Smith which I can say with 100 certainty is my fault since we used an identifier to input the most recent reference so let's go ahead and delete this you can right click select delete reference or you can tick the box and then select delete from the bottom ribbon the box is a nice option if you're deleting multiple references at once but now let's go ahead and move on to the third option which is to upload a PDF to do this go back to add new and select files from computer from here you can look up the file location now if you already have the PDF accessible you can simply drag and drop the PDF file into the reference library what do we have here ah yes we're being asked to review duplicates this is because mendeley is trained trained programmed to detect duplicate material so ideally you want to get rid of the entry that has the least amount of information as we can see with these the PDF by far has more information than the entry that used the DOI number so here's the thing if you have access to the full PDF I always recommend including it for instance if we open our saved entry and select read now we're in the PDF editor where yes you can read the article anytime you want but more importantly you can add highlights in sticky notes and also this starts to become a powerful tool when you start to use annotations or say if you're sharing articles in a group project now I don't have time to get into all of this right now let me know in the comment section if you would like a full tutorial but for now let's move on to the fourth way you can upload an entry into the library which is through the mendeley web importer plugin all right we're chugging along on Google Scholar and we start by clicking this article here so first you might see a window pop up like this that simply means that the mendeley plug-in is pulling data together and you might even see a red pop-up on the sidebar that says view PDF what that means is that mendeley detected a PDF file of this article so here you can read through it decide if you would like to keep it not whatever but to be clear by clicking view PDF that is not importing it into your mendeley library you would need to come back to the original Source right here go up to extensions and select the mendeley web importer this will bring out the full mendeley plug-in column in which from here you can simply select add which will add it to your library and let's take a look there it is at the top of our list now to take this a step further notice how there is this file icon on the right hand side so you'll want to click into the entry and then select read which will properly download the entire PDF into your actual Library keep in mind not all sources come with a PDF but hey it's cool when they're there now let's say the new entry didn't automatically add to your library if that's the case it typically means that all you need to do is resync your library which you can do by selecting the Sync icon up here by your name now going over to the actual web importer sometimes you may run into issues it's it's not a lot but it's not never so here's what I recommend doing anytime the plugin seems to be faulty one refresh your web browser or in some cases you may need to rekindle the library connection to the plugin which you can do by selecting View Library from within the plugin which is going to bring up your mendeley reference library through a web browser from here I recommend resyncing and at that point everything should be firing on all cylinders by the way this is a good thing to know because this means you can access your reference library pretty much from anywhere as long as you have an internet browser but we're going to move on to the fifth and final way you can add references into your library and that is to use the search for article online's tool this is actually mendeley's researching tool and you can find it right here under the tools section and essentially it's going to bring you to mendeley's literature database this is made possible through their partnership with elsevier as you can see I typed in business management and we have a ton of quality articles to choose from and quite frankly I like to say that this tool is essentially the web importer plugin meets an academic database it has the exact same features as you can see you can add this article to your Mandalay Library you have the option to view the entire PDF and if you click the article you're going to get a preview column of what's included so all in all I find this to be an effective way to perform research and to build out your mendeley library speaking of which now that we have a few references let's take a look at the user interface actually I'm going to add a few more first already so this is what your library will look like after you've been using it for a while as you can see all the references are stored in the center of the library and by default it's set to the all references Viewpoint which simply means that they're ordered from most recently added now starting on the left hand side you may or may not see a Green Dot next to the entry that's there to indicate whether or not you've read the PDF file if the Green Dot is there means you haven't read it and do keep in mind that if your entry doesn't have access to a PDF file the Green Dot will remain there indefinitely now next to it you have the star and the star is there so you can favorite certain articles and just like on Gmail when you favorite an article it adds it to your favorites list which you can see is located on the left hand side from there you have four columns that represent the four elements in a reference list entry being the author the year of publication the title and the source next you have the fifth column which is simply a date stamp reflecting the date that this entry was added and then the last column is going to be the file status for the entry so if you see the grade out paper icon that means that there is a PDF fail file available for download Once you click it and it's finished downloading that icon will change to the green check mark and again if you don't see any icon at all it just means that there's no file available for the entry if you'd like to view or edit an entry simply click on it and this is going to populate the information for this reference so the top half that's where all the element information will be contained and then underneath you have a few other fields so if you see the icon or the button for get PDF or read the that will take you to the PDF editor underneath that you have an area where you can paste the abstract if you have one available next you have the tags section so you can assign tags to a reference which are essentially labels based on a common or relevant keyword this makes it easier to group sources together later on using filters for instance this already has the tag bioengineering I might add an additional tag for say climate change this way using a filter I can filter my library to only sources that have the tag climate change bioengineering or both I'll show you how to do this in just a second but let's go ahead and finish out this section so underneath tags this is where the external file will be located if there was a PDF available next you have a field where you can paste the URL link this comes in handy if you're using a source that doesn't have an external file so for example let's say 8 you're referencing a YouTube video If You paste the URL here then you have quick access back to that YouTube video later on and then the final sections in the information are going to be the identifiers so you have the full list of identifiers in the citation key which is simply an identifier for a bib text entry scrolling back to the top you have two more tabs the annotations and the notebook these are both areas where you can add notes while you're performing your research the difference is is that annotations pertain to a specific reference while the notebook contains generalized notes that you can access throughout the entire Library so for example if I'm reading through this article and it makes a super interesting point I might go to The annotation section and jot it down there or if I'm in the PDF editor and I see the super interesting point I might create a sticky note where this section is and that will also be added to The annotation section now let's say reading this article is just a small part of a larger project I might want to include a note in the notebook so I can view it later on to do this I can either start a new page if I'm just beginning or I can add to a previous page I've already started this way when I return to my library I can access that same note page within any Source or I can use the notebook feature directly from the home page but now let's talk about sorting or filtering your library so on the left hand side you have your basic options such as recently added recently read your favorites list or your Publications if you have any linked to your mendeley profile next you can quite literally click on a column to reorder the references by the column heading and you also can search your reference library using the search bar from here you can search for a specific article or even a keyword finally on the right hand side you have filters the two filters are by author or by tags so as you can see here we have the tags we created earlier for example we might filter by bioengineering for a broad view let's say you want to view articles published most recently then you can toggle the year column heading let's say that doesn't matter but you want to refine your bioengineering search this is where we could add climate change so now we're grouping together sources that contain both bioengineering and climate change tags but now let's move on to organizing your library and this can be done through mendeley's folder system which is through Collections and groups now the only difference here is that collections are native to your library while groups can be shared with others for collaboration so let's go ahead and create a collection what you're going to do is you're going to click where it says new collection give your collection a name will go with bioengineering and then hit enter with that your collection is created now we just need to add references to it to do this you can tick the Box on the left for the reference you'd like to add select organize add to collection and then select the collection you'd like to add it to option two is you can click and hold on the reference and then drag and drop it into the collection super easy now when it comes to removing a source from a collection you want to make sure to right click and then select remove collection that way it's only removed from the collection and not deleted from the entire Library something that's really cool is you can add sub collections to your collections so perhaps I'll add a sub collection for climate change here where I have bioengineering I can add another one say stem cell if that's another popular topic I'm researching that is related to bioengineering so basically I just created a mini library now you could take this same system and apply it differently say you create your main section to reflect the course you're taking and then the sub sections are there to organize per project you're assigned so once again don't be afraid to get creative but now let's move on to groups and good news they function almost identically to collections and that you're going to start by giving the group a name you'll add references to the group the same way as before you can even create collections in sub collections within a group for extra organization so really the only notable difference is that you can share this group with people to do this you want to right click the group or you can select the menu option from the right in which you're going to select manage group where from here you can send out invites using people's email addresses but that's officially The Grand Tour of how to use the mendeley library the last thing you need to learn is how to use it in Microsoft Word so let's go ahead and pull up a fresh Word document where the plugin will be ready and waiting for us under the references tab when you open it you'll see a column appear to the right and here you should see all of your references listed out next to the references you'll see citation settings which is where you'll change your citation formatting standard if you need to and also you can change the citation language but let's go ahead and go back to our references and start by inserting our first citation now it's important to note that you need text within your document in order to insert a citation so that's why you see our lovely Latin introduction right here but what you want to do is you want to place your cursor to the exact location of where you'd like the citation to be so in this case it's going to be after the last word in this sentence but before the period once my cursor is good to go I'm going to tick the box for the source I would like to insert and then select insert one citation from the bottom Banner if you need to insert a citation that uses more than one source you're going to follow the exact same steps except you'll tick the box for the additional Source you need and then select insert to citations now let's say you need to edit a citation you have a couple options one when you tick the Box note how there's a preview above the insert one citation button you can double click that which will bring up the window for the information where you can change the fields and if not you can also insert the citation directly from the paper after inserting it by simply clicking within this citation but now let's talk about sorting this list of references because by default it too is going to be set to the all references Viewpoint so you have much of the same options first you have the search bar here which is Handy if you want to search for an author you can search for the title of a specific article or you can search for keywords as a way to help jog your memory to find the article you can also select this drop down menu where you'll see the same options from your library and that you have your recently added recently read your favorites your Publications but most importantly you can access your collections and your groups so if you are doing your due diligence using collections organizing your sources as you are performing research when you're writing your paper it becomes really easy to locate the sources you're using and insert the citations into your paper now the final note I want to make is that if you've added a reference recently to your mendeley library and you don't see it in your Microsoft site plugin there's a good chance you simply need to refresh your plugin to do that you're going to come up here to the menu on the right hand column and then select update from library that is going to sync the two programs together and you should be good to go now finally the last thing the plugin is good for is inserting your bibliography so to do this you want to go ahead and set up your reference page you want to bring your cursor to the first line so where the first reference is going to be inserted then come up back to that menu and select insert bibliography now I recommend setting up your reference page as soon as you insert your first citation because the beauty in the plugin is that every time you add a new citation to your paper it's also going to update your bibliography by by adding the full reference list entry so this becomes a Mindless task while you're writing your paper and when you're finished all you may have to do is go to the reference page adjust some of the formatting and that's it finally when it comes to using mendeley for Google Docs unfortunately there isn't an official plugin available but I do have a workaround where you can still kind of use it to create your references be sure to check out this video if you're interested in learning that for everyone else let me know if you have any questions down in the comments section and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Smart Student

Views: 11,183

Keywords: mendeley reference manager, mendeley desktop, how to use mendeley, Mendeley Beginners Guide, Mendeley software tutorial, mendeley reference manager tutorial, Mendeley apa, mendeley apa citation, mendeley apa 7th edition, mendeley apa style, beginners guide mendeley, mendeley cite word, mendeley cite not working, mendeley web, mendeley web importer not working, mendeley web importer chrome, mendeley web importer

Id: NuCtYCdA4t0

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023