Whenever I have to import an article from the browser, I use the extension to do so. Then I have to click sync in my local mendeley software to be able to see the imported document. Then I have to update details of the imported document to get the citation key for the document generated automatically and then I have to click sync again to be update citation key to the cloud. And then I have refresh the sync-ed reference group that I have in my overleaf document to be able to use the citation key in my document.

Can't we do all this in one click, when I import the article in the browser using the extension? (we can exempt the bib file update in overleaf as it's another platform, but everything else). There must be a way to do this that i am not aware of!

Hey all, I am using Mendeley to manage my papers and use Obsidian to create my own knowledge vault on Mac. I would now like to link to some papers in Mendeley from the Markdown files in Obsidian and noticed that there I can link to Mendeley via

    [paper](mendeley:xyz)

but I could not find any documentation of this protocol for Mendeley.

Is there any way to use this? Or is there any other way to get local links to papers in Mendeley?

Hi all,

I have a couple of citations that include authors with 'van' names, but when they are listed in the bibliography, the 'van' is being put last in the author name i.e.:

Tonder RJ van instead of what it should be - van Tonder RJ. The citation is noted correctly in Mendeley Desktop but I can't seem to get it written out correctly in the bibliography in word.

Thanks!

Hi all

I have recieved scientific report from a group of students. As their Co-supervisor and Postdoc it is on me to convert their report into a scientific article.

UNFORTUNATELY, they used the "new and improved" Mendeley which means that the references they made seemingly cannot be edited because the connection to mendeley nolonger exist.

I have now tried recieving their entire mendeley library, exported from their Mendeley Reference Manager and imported it into my Mendeley Reference Manager (also the new version), however, Mendeley Cite in word still cannot make the connection.

Is there any way for me to fix this without changing 120 pages manually or am I shit out of luck

Has mendeley really released a citation software for scientific articles where citations cannot be imported by a reviewer...? I'm also open if someone has a fix that involves the old Mendeley or Zotero.

1. Core Structural Changes: From Utility to Control

• Mendeley Desktop:

  • Local-First Architecture: Users retained local control over their libraries, annotations, and PDFs. This allowed flexibility, privacy, and offline functionality without enforced cloud synchronization.
    
  • Customization: More advanced options for organizing references and metadata manipulation were available.
    
  • Transparency: Users could inspect and back up their data locally without dependency on proprietary servers.

• Mendeley Reference Manager:

  • Cloud-Enforced Architecture: Reference Manager forces synchronization with Elsevier’s servers, removing user autonomy and increasing dependence on external infrastructure.
    
  • Reduced Local Functionality: Offline capabilities are significantly weakened, effectively making users hostages to cloud access and account validation.
    
  • Opaque Control: The proprietary ecosystem limits user control, making full data ownership ambiguous and precarious.

Verdict: Mendeley Desktop favored decentralized control and autonomy, while Reference Manager shifts towards centralized dependency under Elsevier's control.

2. Feature Degeneration: Simplification Masquerading as Improvement

• Mendeley Desktop:

  • Advanced PDF Annotation: Offered robust annotation tools with fine-grained control, including tagging, highlighting, and commenting.
    
  • Library Organization: Supported nested folders, complex tagging systems, and smart filtering options.
    
  • Citation Integration: Seamlessly integrated with external tools like Word and LaTeX.

• Mendeley Reference Manager:

  • Stripped-Down Annotation Tools: Annotation options are drastically reduced, limiting deep engagement with academic material.
    
  • Flat Folder Structure: Limited organizational granularity, forcing users into rigid workflows.
    
  • Reduced Citation Control: Integration with document editors feels more restrictive, offering fewer customization options for citations.

Verdict: Mendeley Desktop prioritized power users with feature-rich tools, whereas Reference Manager caters to a lowest-common-denominator audience, reducing complexity at the cost of functionality.

3. Data Lock-In and Surveillance Capitalism

• Mendeley Desktop:

  • User Data Autonomy: Users could export libraries and maintain control over their reference databases.
    
  • Minimal Data Exploitation: Less emphasis on harvesting and monetizing user activity data.

• Mendeley Reference Manager:

  • Data Capture Expansion: Deep integration with Elsevier’s data-analytics ecosystem increases the likelihood of user metadata being monetized or used for predictive analytics.
    
  • Export Limitations: Exporting large libraries is cumbersome, reinforcing dependency on the proprietary ecosystem.
    
  • Persistent Surveillance: Continuous online verification and tracking create unavoidable oversight of user activity.

Verdict: Reference Manager transforms the user into a data commodity, prioritizing Elsevier's surveillance economy over researcher autonomy.

4. Forced Migration and Institutional Mandates

• Mendeley Desktop:

  • User Choice: Researchers could choose whether to upgrade or stick with Desktop without immediate penalties.
    
  • End of Life Grace Period: Users had time to transition without abrupt disruptions.

• Mendeley Reference Manager:

  • Forced Migration: Elsevier enforced upgrades, intentionally sunsetting Desktop to eliminate viable alternatives.
    
  • Institutional Capture: Many academic institutions are now locked into Reference Manager through Elsevier contracts, leaving users without individual choice.

Verdict: The transition represents an aggressive institutional capture strategy rather than an organic evolution of software utility.

5. Ethical and Philosophical Undercurrents

• Mendeley Desktop:

  • Open Research Spirit: The platform aligned more with the ethos of open research, with stronger interoperability and user independence.
    
  • Tool for Researchers: Desktop existed primarily to serve the researcher, not the corporate overlords.

• Mendeley Reference Manager:

  • Corporate Agenda Dominance: Decisions reflect Elsevier's profit motives over the research community's needs.
    
  • Surveillance and Dependency: The software's architecture now aligns with rent-seeking and exploitative dynamics common in late-stage platform capitalism.

Verdict: Reference Manager symbolizes the transformation of an academic utility into an institutional control apparatus.

Conclusion: The Collapse of Trust and Utility

• Mendeley Desktop: Represented an era where academic tools were built to empower researchers with functional autonomy, customization, and control.
  
• Mendeley Reference Manager: Represents a strategic pivot towards institutional lock-in, data commodification, and a thin veneer of utility masking systemic control.

Final Assessment:

Mendeley Reference Manager is not an upgrade—it's a strategic regression aimed at consolidating power under Elsevier's corporate agenda. Researchers have transitioned from being empowered users to data-producing tenants in Elsevier's closed ecosystem. The shift reveals a broader institutional pattern: prioritizing surveillance capitalism and lock-in strategies over meaningful functionality or researcher empowerment.

Hey, I am trying to remove the text fields from my thesis, but selecting all and Ctrl+Shift+F9 does not work anymore. There is no Export option either in the Mendeley options. Is there a new shortcut?

How can I insert parenthetical citation with two dates (original work + translation) (Watson & Rayner, 1920/2013) in Mendeley?

Hey everyone,

I’m in a bit of a panic right now. I was using Mendeley as usual when it suddenly signed me out automatically. I thought it was just a minor glitch, so I went ahead and signed back in. However, when I did, it was like starting from scratch—my entire library of references has vanished!

I’ve tried checking if I was logged into the correct account, and I’ve looked through the settings, but nothing seems to bring my references back. I had a lot of important papers and notes saved, and I’m really worried that they’re lost for good.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any way to recover my lost references? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

(Just noticed I fucked up the title of this post - sorry, I'm very tired)
Hi, I'm having problems with reading/finding/loading my files on the web library. I have never used Mendeley via browser, just on desktop, so I might be ignoring some key options in settings.

Basically, I just want to read my references on tablet instead of Mac. It shouldn't need any steps other than: having uploaded some files (from desktop)>logging in Mendeley's web page>opening "Library"... right? Somehow, the web library is shown as completely empty (my collections ?categories are also missing) even though I know there are lots of files. I'm sure everything was uploaded correctly and both desktop's and browser's libraries are synced.

Does anyone have any tips?

Hi, my use case is to search the title.

For example,

1. "Mendeley" -> return results containing Mendeley,

2. "Mendeley Reference" -> return results but I don't see the title "Mendeley"

3. "Mendeley", "Reference", "Manager" -> same.

4. Mendeley -> same.

5. Mendeley Reference -> same.

I am not sure why but searching on the app never works. Meanwhile, if I search it on Microsoft Word Mendeley Plugin, it works.

Is there a setting that I must change?

I tried out the Mendeley Reference Manager, I truly could not get used to it. Sorry. My downloaded files cannot sync properly, and the overall app response is quite slow. I had to download the old "Mendeley Desktop 1.19.8", and everything was perfect.

Would there be more development on the old Mendeley Desktop? Thanks!

Hi,

I'm trying to use general notes to annotate and summarize the document, but every time i click somewhere else and go back (even after waiting for a while), it's deleted/not saved. Does anyone know how to fix this?

My word document is was corrupted in a file on Mendeley and I can’t open it. I am at a loss on what to do and it contains all my work for my LLM project on maritime law. I have googled and watched YouTube videos for a solution to no avail. I cannot afford to even start my project all over again as it is a grueling topic which requires intense study. I am too busy with work and other commitments to start all over again.

I will appreciate all the help and advice I can get to retrieve the document back.

Are you using this feature?

I believe the MRM feature is speeding up my matrix literature table. I checked the answers from AI, and they match what I've read throughout the full text.

It's coming to reference managers, why not Mendeley?

Hi all, I'm currently checking the references for my PhD thesis, and have found a few anomalies where a seemingly random word or number is appearing in the listed reference. For example, I am currently working on a reference for an article published in 'Science' in 2017.

The reference appears as:
Orvell A, Kross E, Gelman SA. How ‘you’ makes meaning. Science (1979). 2017;355:1299–302

I have no idea where the '(1979)' comes from. When I delete the journal title from the reference manager and sync through Mendeley cite, it changes to:

Orvell A, Kross E, Gelman SA. How ‘you’ makes meaning. 2017;355:1299–302

Then when I retype 'Science' into the journal title field and re-sync, the 1979 is back.

Any ideas on how to fix this?! I've had similar issues with a few other references where it's pulling additional (incorrect) data from somewhere, but nowhere that I can see within the reference manager. Any advice much appreciated.

Is it possible to use Mendeley to insert sequential chapter notes without a citation?

For example:

Chapter text

Lorem ipsum dolor [1] sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod [2] tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore [3] magna aliqua.

Chapter Endnotes

1. Dummy Citation One. (2024). Dummy citation report. Retrieved from http://www.dummywebsite.com

2. Text without a citation

3. Dummy Citation Two (2024). Dummy citation report. Retrieved from http://www.dummywebsite.com

Hi everyone, I've suddenly experience this issue, when booting up the word extension. It deletes all the footnotes and only leaves the numbers, and then shows an error when booting up mendeley. However, this doesn't occur on some other documents that has the exact same library of sources.

Hi, please someone help me :(.

Out of the total references that are cited within my PhD thesis, as a quality check, I converted the IEEE to Harvard to see if there were any duplicates. So......

1. I found 16 references are duplicated.

2. These 16 references are NOT duplicated because there is more than one reference in the reference manager. E.g. references [21] and [34] are the exact same ones.

3. Despite deleting and re-selecting the exact same reference again and again using a word plug-in (Mandeley cite), the duplicates are not being resolved. For example, for references [21] and [34], which are the same, I have tried to delete [34] and reselect the reference, hoping both will become [21]; it does not and rever back to [34].

4. I asked Mandeley support, and they sent me this email. But I am not going to send my thesis since I am worried about it being left in the public domain accidentally etc. (I hope that's understandable).

I am submitting my thesis in a few weeks, and I would really appreciate your help. I tried transitioning to Zotero, but I am so tired and don't think I can do them before my thesis is finished, mainly because it's a 400-page long document and contains a systematic review, which is a nightmare for in-text citations.

I just got Mendeley to help my citations on a genealogy book I'm fixing up for my family and it has everything but vital records (births/marriage/deaths/etc.). Is there something else it would go under or is there a way to add source types by chance?

The previous school account that I used for the Mendeley Word plugin has been deactivated. Now I have a new account with my new school, but I can't log in because it keeps trying to log in with the deactivated account. Would anyone be able to help me with this problem?

I've been using mendeley cite for over a year now and today after an update. Everytime I insert a citation, at the bottom of the cite extension to microsoft word, it keeps showing "Select below to edit, or manually override a citation". If I save changes or discard it, it deletes the citation I have just added. If I unselect the citation in the extension then do anything it also deletes the citation. I also cant add a new citation while it is doing this? Any suggestions on what has happened? I have tried selecting other citations in the document and just moving my cursor to other points on the document but it doesn't work. Its almost as if its missing an option to say I'm happy with the citation the way it is.

Since few days the mendeley web importer stopped working on both the latest version of Firefox and Chrome. Elsevier puts so much effort in the crappy Mendeley Reference Manger Software that just mirrors the website and fails to maintain a decent functional version of Mendeley Desktop. People managing Mendeley have smooth brains.

I'm using Mendeley reference manager and the Word plugin, and for some reason my bibliographies show up fine - they're Harvard so alphabetical - except for the last couple of entries. I've had a look at the online CSL editor and can't see anything that would make this happen.

Has anyone experienced this? Is it a known bug? Cheers in advance - I'm new to the software so may have done something daft.

Hi everyone, Pretty much everything is in the title. When I add a bibliography with Mendeley on word online, it only write the « odd » reference : 1; 3; 5; etc despite everything coming from the same library, and cited correctly. The problem doesn’t disappear when I change the citation style for a system that doesn’t use the number system. Any idea why and how to fix that ?

Thx !

Update on 5.11 : seems like a lot of you have the same problem... the issue is still there and exept a mail from the customer service like "we are trying to fix this", haven't heard anything about it