mendeley literature search version

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Desktop Reference Manager: Searching Within Mendeley's "Literature Search"

While you can easily use Mendeley while you browse in your favorite places on the web, it also has a built in feature where you can search works that have been added to Mendeley Web Libraries throughout the years. Our recommendation at IU Libraries would be to use this function in tandem with other databases and websites, as it may miss works in under researched topical areas.

• To use this function, open your Mendeley Software and click the "literature search" button at the top of the lefthand menu.
• You can search by author, title, year, or more.
• Once you find a result you are interested in, click it and select "Save reference" in the right hand tool bar.

Mendeley.com: Another Way to Search Literature

The Mendeley Reference Manager online does not have the literature search option included. Instead, you will have to start from the Mendeley website .

• To use this function, go to Mendeley.com and try a search in the search bar with the option set to "articles." (or people if you prefer)
• Once you find a result you are interested in, click on the record and select "Add to Library" in the right hand tool bar. You may have to log in to see this.

Collaborating With Other Users

One benefit of making a Mendeley account is the ability to connect with and work with other users. The main issue is they also have to have a Mendeley account for full functionality.

You can create a new group in your Mendeley Desktop by right clicking "Groups" in the left menu bar, and then selecting "New Group" from the drop down menu.

You can create a new group in Mendeley Reference Manager by clicking "New Private Group" or "New Public Group" in the left menu bar.

Transferring Your Library to or from Zotero

Citation managers have their own 'language' in the form of a file format that most of them will recognize. Citation managers that are relatively easy to transfer between include Mendeley, EndNote, and Zotero.

If you already have a library in Zotero, and want it in Mendeley:

• In Zotero, go to "File," then select "Export Library."
• Choose the BibTex format, and whether you want to include notes or files. Click OK.
• Open Mendeley Desktop, and go to "File."
• Select "Import", "BibTex", then pick the file on your computer.
• Watch your library come to life!
• Open Mendeley Reference Manager, and go to "Add New."
• Select "Import Library", "BibTex", then pick the file on your computer.
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Mendeley Blog

New release: literature search from within mendeley deskop.

[Editor’s Note–We thought you’d like to know: this 2013 post is a bit dated. Find Mendeley’s updated search features here , and info about Mendeley’s other features in the Mendeley Guides .]

Often the most impressive thing about a new software release is infrastructural and not immediately apparent, but not this time! In our latest release, we have added one of our all time most requested features – literature search from Mendeley Desktop. Also included in this release are a few improvements to how Mendeley Groups work, making it easier to collaborate with others using Mendeley.

We’ve always had the vision of Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Web working as parts of a whole, but there have been some gaps, perhaps most notably how research discovery works. For example, to search your existing collection of research, you’d use Mendeley Desktop, but to search for new research in Mendeley’s catalog, you would go to the website. With the latest release, you’ll see a new section in the folder tree in the left pane. Where there was previously a division between My Library and Groups, there’s now a new section for discovery tools, hosting a literature search tool and Mendeley Suggest, our research recommendation service which learns about your academic interests and recommends new research specifically for you. There will be more discovery tools coming to this space, but for now let’s focus on how to use catalog search from Desktop.

How to use Literature Search

Selecting the literature search tool brings up an empty search pane. Typing a query in this box works similar to how it works on Mendeley Web. Selecting the magnifying glass shows you document options previously available on the advanced search page on Mendeley Web. You can limit your search to authors, article titles, publication names, year of publication, and to only open access publications. Searching for people or groups will come to Desktop in a future release.

When you’ve got results, you can add them to your library by clicking the “Save” button that appears above the details pane on the right, or by simply dragging and dropping the article from the results pane to any folder in My Library or group that you’re a member of. You’ll be able to see whether or not the full article is available when you select the document. For now, full text is available for articles from a fully Open Access journal and for those which the author has retained the rights and chosen to make available. In the future, you’ll be able to see journals to which your institution subscribes and content from hybrid open access journals (subscription journals with an open access option).

Advanced Search Operators

Understanding a bit about how the search works can help you get better results. The main concept to learn is that search is controlled by operators, which are terms that make your search more specific. For example, searching for “bird” would return results about birds, but also from researchers named “Bird”. To find only research from an author “Bird”, you’d use the author operator like this [ author:Barlogie ]. Likewise, to limit your search to only results from a specific journal, you’d use the published_in: operator. To limit your results to a date range, use the year operator like so – year:[1983 TO 2013]. To show only research from open access journals, use oa_journal:yes as part of your search.

You can chain operators together using AND and OR to do more complex searches. For example, searching for author:”Jonathan A Eisen” AND published_in:Science would show you work that Dr. Eisen has published in Science and made available via his Mendeley profile .

There’s just a few more things to know to be a successful searcher. Phrases are indicated with quotation marks around the phrase, such as [ published_in:”PLOS ONE” ] or “mesenchymal stem cell” and without the quotes you’ll get results containing ANY of your terms, not ALL of your terms. More information on how search works is available.

Download for free today

This release of Mendeley marks another big step forward for the product and lays the groundwork for much more to come, so take it for a spin and let us know what you think!

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10 thoughts on “ new release: literature search from within mendeley deskop ”.

Thanks for update. These could be good features, but…..

* search is, and has always been, too rigid. For example 1) author:”S Pinker” does not return papers where the author is listed as “Steven Pinker” or “SA Pinker” 2) author:”pinker, s” does not give the same result as author:”s pinker”, 3) a search for a author with diacritical characters in their name (e.g. Poincaré) requires entry of the diacritic marks in the search (unlike on pubmed or google search for example).

* search does not seem to support date ranges

* why do you restrict literature search to mendeley web? why not include pubmed, google scholar, scopus etc?

Regarding mendeley suggest,

* mendeley suggest makes suggestions for papers I already have in my library. What’s the point of this?

* I feel mendeley suggest is too general. My library contains many papers that were relevant to work i was doing 6 years ago, but not so relevant to work I am doing now. I would like to be able to restrict the portion of my database that feeds mendeley suggest so that it gives me more suggestions relevant to work i am doing at the moment. For example I would like to be able to have mendeley suggest use only papers I have added in the last 18 months, or get suggestions based on papers I have in specified folders in my library.

Thanks for the feedback OSM. We’ll be working to improve our search rigidity, and the catalog quality itself over the next 6 months. We’re looking for as much feedback as possible, and a lot of the stuff you mentioned here has come up in internal discussions already.

Regarding mendeley suggest, we have some interesting things in the works for 1.10. Stay tuned 😉

I have to agree with OSM. Search is too slow and rigid for me to use. I have trouble finding papers I know the specifics of, let alone more vague options. Would also prefer at least a Google scholar option as well.

Mendeley suggest has stopped working, but before that was recommending papers on topics I no longer have interest in (but still keep in my library).

Looking forward to 1.1 though (1.9 dev 3 now).

A couple suggestions:

It would also be handy to be able to sort in the results. date, pubtype, contains pdf, etc.

I frequently notice that in the search results that other have not categorized the publication correctly. For example, it is VERY often that someone categorizes a conference proceeding as a journal article. It would be nice to be able to update the database from the search results. Even if I don’t download a citation I would like to be able to fix things while searching – so others get good results.

Note for any Ubuntu users experiencing problems: I had to run “sudo apt-get install mendeleydesktop” in order to update from 1.8.5. Neither checking for updates via Mendeley, apt-get update, nor downloading the program via the Mendeley desktop would work. It replaced 1.8.5 with 1.9.

Looks like the search results are not even restricted to Elsevier’s paywalled articles. Good job.

I added details to the post to show how to use date ranges in search. It’s like this – year:[1983 TO 2013]

Thanks for Steve for pointing this out.

Thank you for this update, I’ve been waiting for the catalogue search feature for a long time! Keep up the great work, I’m looking forward to further search and recommendation improvements. In particular, readership and reference rankings for papers on Mendeley web would be outstanding.

Is it possible to download a PDF (if available) of the articles straight from the search findings?

Similar to Jon Klokov. if I use the internet on campus, I can download the article directly. I hope Mendeley can also automatically download. 🙂 Anyway. Thank for Mendeley Team.

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• Healey Library
• Research Guides

Literature Reviews

• Researching Your Topic
• What is Mendeley?

Get Started with Mendeley

• Writing a Literature Review
• Reading List
• Citations This link opens in a new window

Mendeley is a web and desktop based application designed to help you gather, organize and cite all your references.

• Get started by creating your Mendeley account on the web, download the desktop application (Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux) on any number of computers, and access Mendeley Manager web. Sync your Mendeley library between all your workspaces.
• Install the brand-new citation tool, Mendeley Cite  compatible with Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Word versions 2016 and above and with the Microsoft Word app for iPad ® .
• Install the Web Importer to save citations from databases and websites.​

If you are using an earlier version of Word, you can use the existing Mendeley Citation Plugin for Word available with Mendeley Desktop. The Word Plugin is compatible with Windows Word 2007, 2010, 2013; Mac Word 2011, 2016; and LibreOffice. 

A free Mendeley account provides:

• Personal Web Space with 2GB of storage space (about 2,000 to 8,300 PDFs depending on the size of the PDF).
• Shared Web Space to create private groups with a maximum of 25 people per group.

The  Mendeley Support  site is a great place to look more information on all aspects of the program.

• Mendeley Reference Manager Guide
• Create a  Mendeley account
• Install Mendeley Reference Manager for Desktop  on your computer
• Install the Web Importer  for your browser

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• Last Updated: Dec 5, 2023 8:29 AM
• URL: https://umb.libguides.com/litreview

Library Subject Guides

2. find & manage research literature: mendeley.

• Google Scholar
• Keenious This link opens in a new window
• Find Theses
• Keeping Current
• Pirated Journal Content
• Systematic Reviews

Other Research Support Guides 1. Plan (Design and Discover) your Research >> 3. Doing the Research >> 4. Writing up your Research >> 5. Publish & Share >> 6. Measure Impact

Get Mendeley

Go to www.mendeley.com and create an account.

Mendeley has a web and desktop version. You will need both to take advantage of all of Mendeley’s features.

The two versions will sync automatically.

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is a freely available reference management tool that helps you to organise and cite references.  It is also an academic social networking platform enabling you to share and discover references. 

Help using Mendeley

Help guides from Mendeley

Videos from Mendeley

Who to Contact

Kerry gilmour  , phone:  +6433693933.

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Literature Reviews, Systematic Reviews & More for Health Sciences

• Books & Videos on Writing a Literature Review
• Systematic/Scoping Reviews & Tools
• Finding a Journal to Publish In

Get started with Mendeley

A freely-available reference manager that we currently offer support for is Mendeley.

Learn more about Mendeley - and who to contact for help - on the  Citation Managers at UMass  guide.

• Mendeley Reference Management introductory page for Mendeley
• Mendeley Guides Help guides available from Mendeley
• Mendeley Basics from University of Michigan Library

Mendeley Reference Manager has replaced Mendeley Desktop as Mendeley's primary reference manager. Currently both reference managers are available and can be installed at the same time. There will be a notice period before Mendeley Desktop is retired. 

There are four components of Mendeley that will help you to collect, organize, and cite research. Follow these steps to get started. 

• Go to mendeley.com to create an account.  This will create your Mendeley Web Library account.   
• Add Mendeley Web Importer to your browser.  This will identify the browser that you are using and is compatible for UMass Community members with Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Mendeley Web Importer cannot currently be added to Chrome because of UMass IT security settings.  
• Download Mendeley Reference Manager . This is the desktop client that will sync to your Mendeley Web Library account.   
• Install Mendeley Cite  for Word.  This will allow to import citations into your documents. 
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Library Services

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES

• Library skills

Mendeley Desktop

Using mendeley desktop for systematic reviews.

• Mendeley applications
• Creating a Mendeley account
• Navigating Mendeley Desktop
• Synchronising Mendeley Desktop & Web
• Exporting from online resources
• Adding a reference manually
• Editing a reference
• Adding PDFs
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• Searching your library
• Using Folders
• Deleting references
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• Inserting citations
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• Further help

Mendeley would not usually be considered as the best choice of software for a full systematic review. Especially if your review involves downloading a large number of references, or you are planning on publishing your review, we would recommend using EndNote software for your review instead of Mendeley. It is much more transparent about which items are identified as duplicates and has much greater flexibility relating to checking and  removing duplicates . This is likely to significantly reduce the risk of accidentally removing items that are not duplicates and is more thorough when working with large sets of references.

Mendeley is only suitable for systematic reviews if you have the desktop version already downloaded, as the replacement, Mendeley Reference Manager does not currently have a deduplication option. Mendeley Desktop is no longer available to download for new users and will only be available on UCL computers or on your own device using  Desktop@UCL Anywhere  for a limited time. 

Make sure you are aware of the reporting requirements for the methodology of your review and check that Mendeley will be suitable for providing the data  required for that before you start using Mendeley for your review. 

Below is detailed a step by step process for using Mendeley for your review.

Backing up your Mendeley library

Adding references to your library.

• Removing duplicates

Screening references

It's recommended to keep backing up your Mendeley desktop library as you add new sets of references by syncing it with the online version of Mendeley. 

• Synchronising web and desktop

For each source you search, create a folder in Mendeley where you will add these references to your library.

Export the references from each source in turn to the appropriate folder in your Mendeley library.

• Exporting references to Mendeley desktop

Make sure you record the number of references exported from each database before you import the references into Mendeley, as when you add references to your library it will start removing references it recognises as duplicate references. In practice this means while you might export 50 references from a database, there may only be 45 appearing in the folder if some are duplicates. 

It can also be useful to  tag  all references in the folders with the name of the database or other source so you can tell which database the reference was originally downloaded from. To do this, highlight all items in the folder and edit the reference that is open in the right hand pane by adding the name of the database or other source to the tag field, e.g. Medline. This will update all of the tag fields in references in that folder. 

Once you've added your references to your Mendeley library from all your sources, drag all the records from each of the individual folders into another new folder, from which you will remove duplicates. Mendeley may recognise and remove additional duplicates at this stage, so you may find the number of records in this folder does not total the number in your individual folders.

Now use Mendeley's  duplicate checking tool to find the remaining possible duplicates. Click on the folder that includes all your references for your review to do this.

Make sure that you check the duplicates thoroughly by clicking to expand the reference sets before merging them. After you have merged all the duplicates, it is recommended to do a final manual check for duplicates on the folder containing all your references, by clicking on the title column of the central pane to order them alphabetically.

If you're working with multiple reviewers to screen your references and want to use a reference management software to do so, we recommended using EndNote, following the methodology linked on our EndNote guide.

If you are planning to use reference screening software such as Rayaan or Covidence, however, it is possible to export your references from Mendeley as a RIS file, though please note this will export all references in your Mendeley library. The same methodology can be followed as for the instructions on our EndNote guide. It is also recommended to deduplicate references in Mendeley before transferring them to a screening software.

• Exporting your Mendeley library as a RIS file
• Exporting your library to screening software The same instructions for EndNote can be followed once you have exported your library as a RIS file.
• Screening references within EndNote
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• Last Updated: Nov 8, 2023 10:53 AM
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NCI LIBRARY

Mendeley libguide: mendeley search & papers.

• What is Mendeley?
• Getting Started
• Adding Files
• Organising Files
• Mendeley Search & Papers
• Using Mendeley with MS Word
• Other Features
• Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• ScienceDirect

Literature Search

Featured in the left panel of Mendeley, ‘ Literature Search ’ may lead you to other material that is relevant to your topic - you can then search for the full-text document within relevant databases.

Mendeley Search

Within your own library and files, you can quickly  search  for information with a keyword which will include the full-text of any pdf documents you have stored as well as any notes and tags that you may have added - you can choose one particular folder or search all documents. You can also use the drop down options to search Authors, Titles, Publication Names,Year and Notes. 

You can conduct a more specific search by entering tag: and then your search term - this will only return results that have been specifically tagged with this term by you. You can do the same by searching abstract: and then your search term.

Mendeley Desktop - Related

The Related button above your Desktop Library is a nice feature that will recommend related articles based on the files you select in your library.

Click on the files in your Mendeley Desktop Library, press CTRL if you want to select multiple articles and select the Related button on the top left of the screen. A list of articles related to your selection will appear.

Search in Mendeley Desktop

The Advanced search feature is no longer an option for Mendeley Web.

Mendeley Research Papers

You can also discover Mendeley readership statistics about the paper you are reading.  Browse Mendeley’s crowd-sourced research catalog of millions of papers . 

Papers is a crowd-sourced database containing millions of papers which can be searched like any other database.

When you upload PDFs and save citations to your Mendeley account, Mendeley anonymously connects the academic discipline with this particular paper/citation. When more people in your discipline also save the same paper/citation, it gives the connection more weight.

This will allow you to discover new and popular articles in your area of research.

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• Next: Using Mendeley with MS Word >>
• Last Updated: Oct 4, 2023 4:15 PM
• URL: https://libguides.ncirl.ie/MendeleyLibguide