Mendeley = Mostly Okay
Updated October 27, 2020

Mendeley = Mostly Okay

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Mendeley

As a graduate student, I use Mendeley both individually, managing references for my own research, and as part of a group of 4-5 research staff. I've used Mendeley to manage >800 citations across the systematic review pipeline -- from downloading titles and abstracts, screening titles and abstracts using multiple reviewers (though group folders), and ultimately full-text review and markup. I also used Mendeley for a range of academic work to archive and index my needed sources.

Pros

  • Easy to use interface
  • The use of font size and style makes information easily discoverable within the article previews
  • Drag-and-drop functions make article indexing particularly simple

Cons

  • Syncing errors when using multiple devices occur infrequently (but still too often), leading to lost work and retrieved articles
  • Mendeley's servers sometimes are down, which prevents group work from being conducted on multiple machines through group folders
I now use Zotero, and prefer Zotero. Mendeley's occasional glitches caused too much stress for this busy grad student. The research team I joined already used Zotero, so making the shift to the new software was based on group needs.
If you are planning on using a citation manager on a single device for solo citation management, Mendeley is perfectly suited to your needs. If you need to do work on multiple machines or as part of a collaboration, I think Mendeley has some work to do before it is right for you.

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