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Manage Citations and PDFs with Zotero and Mendeley

Information on using Zotero and Mendely for citation and PDF management

The Bottom Line

Best Uses for Mendeley Web:

 

  • Import citations when you're away from your computer.
  • Download PDFs with one click when the article is freely available on the web.
  • Discover articles from other Mendeley users by topic or popularity.
  • Find people who share your interests and invite colleagues to join.
  • Create public and private groups to share resources and updates.
  • Find and join or follow groups, too.

My Library Tab

 

My Library is your collection of papers, folders, and groups.

As with Mendeley Desktop, you can mark articles as read or unread and star your favorites.

 

 

Groups Tab

 As with Mendeley Desktop, Groups lets you create and use public or private groups. You can also find groups in the Search tab and join or follow their updates.

 

 

Importing Article Citations

 

Import citations with only one click

when searching in these sources.

 

 

Be sure to have the Import to Mendeley button installed.

 

 

Try different display profiles if Mendeley isn't recognizing the article's bibliographic information. Make sure Mendeley is importing accurate information. It is especially important to check the reference type in this case it is set to generic instead of journal article and the year and volume number are missing. To add/edit information click Edit. In some cases Mendeley won't be able to capture very much metadata. Mendeley is much better at pulling data from PDF files than grabbing metadata from websites (even library databases).

 

 

Mendeley will import the PDF of the article when it can, but it can't grab the PDF of everything due to licensing restrictions. You can import PDFs into the web version or add them to the Deskop version later.

 

EBSCO's Academic Search Complete

 

 

To be able to go to the article later, you'll probably want to make sure you have the stable URL or permalink.

EBSCO's Academic Search Complete

 

 

Then, you can go into

Edit Document Details,

 and add your stable URL.

 

 

Once you're in Mendeley Desktop, you can go back to the article and download the PDF or import your saved or emailed article.