mendeley literature review

• 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

Reference & Instruction Librarian

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

• << Previous: Managing Your Sources
• Next: Zotero >>
• Last Updated: Nov 6, 2024 12:27 PM
• URL: https://umb.libguides.com/litreview

Work With Us

Private Coaching

Done-For-You

Short Courses

Client Reviews

Free Resources

Full Tutorial: How To Use Mendeley

By: Derek Jansen | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | January 2018 (Updated September 2023)

I f you’re fumbling about trying to manage citations and references by hand (or using Microsoft Word’s terrible reference manager), please stop now. Here, we’ll show you how to use Mendeley Reference Manager to save a huge amount of time on referencing, while also ensuring it’s 100% correctly formatted , every time.

What We’ll Cover

• What (exactly) is Mendeley Reference Manager?
• Registering and downloading Mendeley
• The Mendeley Library interface
• How to add resources to your Mendeley Library
• How to manage resources in Mendeley
• How to use Mendeley within Microsoft Word
• Ask your questions …

What (exactly) is Mendeley?

Let’s start by quickly addressing two important starting questions – namely, “ What is Mendeley? ” and “ Why should you even use it? ”.

Simply put, Mendeley is a fantastic free tool that makes the task of referencing a lot easier – and infinitely more accurate. Essentially, you load up the reference information into Mendeley just once, and then Mendeley makes sure that all of your in-text citations, as well as your reference list are perfectly formatted according to your university’s required referencing system – for example, APA, Harvard, etc.

In a nutshell, Mendeley takes care of the tiresome and error-prone task of managing and formatting citations and references , saving you loads of time and ensuring that it’s all done with 100% accuracy – which is near impossible if you try to do it manually. If you’re undertaking any sort of academic writing, you need to get comfy with Mendeley , pronto! This is especially true if you’re writing a longer-format piece such as a dissertation or thesis .

Downloading & Registering Mendeley

The first thing you’ll need to do is register a Mendeley account . This is free and takes just a minute to complete. You can register by visiting the Mendeley site here .

The next thing you’ll need to do is add the Mendeley Web Importer to your browser (for example, Chrome or Firefox). The web importer is a browser plugin that allows you to quickly add web-based resources to your Mendeley library. I’ll show you how to use this a little later in the video, but for now, you just need to add the web importer to your browser – you can access that here .

Last but certainly not least, you’ll need to get the Mendeley Cite plugin . This plugin is what connects Mendeley (or more specifically, all the reference data you’ll have in your Mendeley Library) with Microsoft Word , which you’ll use to write up your work. Again, this is a free plugin and you can access it here .

At this point, you might be thinking “Well, what about the desktop app?”. If you’d like to use the desktop application to manage your Mendeley library, you’re most welcome to, but we’ve found the web version to be just as good. The web version also ensures that all of your reference data are always perfectly synchronised on the cloud, so there’s no risk of synchronisation issues. All that said, there’s no problem if you want to use the desktop version – everything we cover here will still be relevant 🙂

The Mendeley Interface

Now that we have all the puzzle pieces in place, let’s look at the main interface, so that you can understand what each section does and how to get the most out of Mendeley.

The “home base” of Mendeley is what’s called the “ Library ”. You can access that here , or just click the “Library” button in the top right corner of the main Mendeley site. The Library area is where you will manage all of the reference data. On the left-hand side, you’ll see a selection of options. The first section is essentially a set of filters, providing different ways in which you can sift through your reference data. Most commonly, you’ll use the “ All references ” option, but you can also view recently added references, favourites and so on.

The next section is the collections section. Collections are essentially folders in which you can place related papers in whichever organisation system you like. For example, if your study involves analysing four key variables, you might have a collection for each variable. Or if you’re looking at an issue through different disciplinary lenses, you might have a collection for each lens. 

Continuing down, the final section is the groups section. Groups allow you to share references and collaborate with up to 25 people . This is useful, for example, if you’re working on a group research project and want to share reference info between group members.

 Moving to the top of the page, you’ll see a button labelled Notebook . The notebook is a space where you can jot down any general notes you want to make. These notes are called “Pages” in Mendeley, and it’s important to note that they’re not directly linked to any specific reference . Therefore, this is a useful place to add general thoughts that you can revisit later. If you do want to make notes that are specific to a resource , you can do that using a feature called “ annotations ”, which we’ll look at in the next section.

How To Add References To Mendeley

The first thing you’ll need to do is to add your actual reference data to Mendeley. This is the least exciting part for most students, but the good news is that Mendeley offers quite a few options in this regard.

Option 1: Adding reference data manually

Manually adding reference data is Mendeley is the slowest and most time-intensive route, but it’s useful to discuss it first so that you can see exactly what information Mendeley captures .

To add a resource manually, click the “Add new” button, followed by “Add entry manually”. As you can see, Mendeley then allows you to manually enter all the key information such as the author, date, title and so on. One thing to notice is that depending on the type of resource , the available fields within Mendeley will change . For example, if you select “Television broadcast”, the fields will be different from that of a journal article or a patent.

A useful thing to note here is that you can fast-track this process by using an “ identifier ”. For example, you can search for a DOI or Pubmed ID and it will auto-populate the info.

Option 2: Upload a PDF

The second way to add reference data to Mendeley is to upload the PDF article . Naturally, this is only useful if you have a PDF copy of the resource, and if it is a journal article. For the most part, when you upload a journal article PDF, Mendeley will be able to auto-populate the fields , which will save you the time and effort of filling it in yourself (although it’s always a good idea to double-check this automated data).

The main benefit of using this method is that it means Mendeley will include a copy of the PDF within the Mendeley interface , which makes it easy for you to access the article whenever needed. This approach will also allow you to make highlighted annotations and notes within the article itself. Of course, I’ll show you how to do this in the next section.

Option 3: Use the Mendeley Web Importer

The next way to add reference info to Mendeley is to use the Web Importer, which is the browser plugin we installed earlier. To use the Web Importer, simply visit the URL for any given resource (e.g., a news article, or a journal article within an academic database) and then click the Mendeley icon up in the top right . From there, you can easily add the resource to your library, or you can put it into a specific collection or group.

When using the Mendeley Web importer, it’s always a good idea to double-check the imported info, as this isn’t always perfect. You can do so by clicking the little pencil icon in the importer window, or by editing the information in the library at a later stage. This is particularly important when you’re using the web importer to add general webpages (i.e., non-academic resources), as there will often be some missing information that needs to be included.

Option 4: Use Mendeley’s search engine

The final option is to use Mendeley’s own search engine . Mendeley Search is similar to Google Scholar in terms of functionality, meaning that you can simply enter the name of the journal article that you want to add and then add it to your library with one click.

You can also use Mendeley Search to find relevant journal articles by entering a keyword . This is particularly useful for finding resources as Mendeley Search often allows you to get access to the full article in PDF format, which is great.

Last but not least, it’s worth noting that if you are currently using  different reference management software and want to move over to Mendeley, that’s completely doable. Just click the “Add new” button, followed by “Import Library”. Mendeley allows you to import Bibtex, Endnote and RIS files, which you should be able to extract from most mainstream reference management packages.

How Manage Your Mendeley Library

Now that we’ve added our reference info to Mendeley, let’s talk about how you can manage your library effectively. Mendeley offers a few different options to help you organise and manage all of your resources.

Mendeley Favourites

You can mark any resource as a favourite by clicking the little star next to the author’s name. By doing this, you’ll be able to shortlist your favourites by selecting the “Favorites” option on the left menu. This functionality is pretty basic, but it can be useful if you want to quickly access a small group of key articles .

Mendeley Tags

The next option, which is a little more sophisticated, is tags . Essentially, you can create as many different tags as you like and then mark up any given resource with the relevant tag (or multiple tags). Once you’ve tagged your resources, you can use the “Filter” option in the top right corner to quickly view all the articles using the respective tag. 

Mendeley Collections

Another bit of functionality to be aware of is collections . As we mentioned earlier, collections are much like folders, which means that you can use collections to group resources into certain themes , methodologies, variables, and so on.

To create a collection, just click the “New Collection” section and enter a name, and then you can just drag and drop the relevant resources into the collection. It’s worth pointing out that all of your resources will always be visible in the “All References” section, so don’t worry about not being able to remember which collection you dropped a resource into.

Mendeley Groups

Mendeley’s Groups functionality allows you to share reference information with your colleagues , which can be super useful for collaborative projects.

To make use of this, start by selecting “New Group”. From there, click the three-dot menu and select “Manage group” to add members to the group. To add references to the group, return to the “All references” section and drag and drop the relevant references into the group. Again, don’t worry about this action moving your references out of your library – any reference that you share with a group will still be accessible in your library .

Notes & Annotations

Last but not least, let’s look at the notebook function. The Mendeley’s Notebook area is a flexible space, where you can make general notes that are not specific to any given resource .

To create a note (or what Mendeleys refers to as a “page”), click the Notebook button, followed by “New Page”. Once you’ve created a note, it will “live” in your Mendeley library, but you can also export your notes as RTF files , which are text files that you can open using any Word processor. This is useful if you want to print your notes at some point or store them somewhere else.

Within the notes section, you’ll also notice an option called “ Annotations ”, which allows you to make notes about specific resources . This can be very useful for jotting down insights or key takeaways for each resource . To use annotations, just select the resource you want to make an annotation for, then click the “annotations” tab and enter your notes.

How To Use Mendeley In Word

Now that we’ve looked at how to add and manage your reference data within Mendeley, it’s time to get to the most important part – using Mendeley within your actual Word document. In this tutorial, I’m using Microsoft’s online version of Word, but the layout and process will be much the same if you’re using the desktop version.

The first thing you’ll need to do is open the Mendeley Cite plugin within Word. You can find that over in the references tab (or sometimes the “add-ins” tab). Once you’ve done that, you’ll see that you have a mini-version of your Mendeley library within Word on the right-side bar.

Next, you’ll need to set the citation style for your document , for example, APA , MLA , etc. To do this, just click on the “Citation settings” tab, and then hit “Change citation style”. You can then select whichever style your university requires. If you don’t see the required style in this list, you can search for more styles by clicking the button titled “Search for another style” down at the bottom.

Once that’s all set, you can return to the “References” section within the Mendeley tab (i.e., the default section) and get to work adding citations to your document.

To add an in-text citation, simply place your cursor where you want the citation added , and then select the relevant resource by ticking it, after which you can hit the “Insert” button. If you want to add multiple references to a citation, simply tick the relevant resources and off you go.

To create a reference list (or what Mendeley refers to as a bibliography ), all you need to do is head over to the section of your document where you want to place the list and then click the three-dot menu in the Mendeley plugin, followed by “ Insert bibliography ”. Mendeley then does all the hard work for you.

As you can see, Mendeley generates a complete reference list , based on the resources you’ve cited in your document. This list is perfectly formatted according to the style you specified earlier, which saves you a huge amount of time . As long as you’ve captured the reference information correctly when you added the resource to Mendeley, you can rest assured that this reference list is 100% accurate.

The only thing you may still need to do is set the line spacing , based on your university or department’s requirements. To do this, highlight your entire reference list and select the line spacing icon in Word’s formatting menu.

Have A Question?

In this tutorial, we’ve covered the core functionality you need to know about to get the most out of Mendeley. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Please keep in mind that while we try to help as much as we can, we cannot provide technical support for Mendeley. If something isn’t working the way it should be, please contact Mendeley support here.

You Might Also Like:

How To Choose A Tutor For Your Dissertation

Hiring the right tutor for your dissertation or thesis can make the difference between passing and failing. Here’s what you need to consider.

5 Signs You Need A Dissertation Helper

Discover the 5 signs that suggest you need a dissertation helper to get unstuck, finish your degree and get your life back.

Writing A Dissertation While Working: A How-To Guide

Struggling to balance your dissertation with a full-time job and family? Learn practical strategies to achieve success.

How To Review & Understand Academic Literature Quickly

Learn how to fast-track your literature review by reading with intention and clarity. Dr E and Amy Murdock explain how.

Dissertation Writing Services: Far Worse Than You Think

Thinking about using a dissertation or thesis writing service? You might want to reconsider that move. Here’s what you need to know.

📄 FREE TEMPLATES

Research Topic Ideation

Proposal Writing

Literature Review

Methodology & Analysis

Academic Writing

Referencing & Citing

Apps, Tools & Tricks

The Grad Coach Podcast

19 Comments

I am impressed with Mendeley’s offering.

Awesome! Thank you! Definitely won’t be manually entering each reference anymore for my MSc thesis!

Pleasure, Gitte!

I want to download literature review Excel

Thank very much Derek . You have greatly helped me. God bless you indeed. Thanks

You’re welcome 🙂

All thanks and appreciation to you

Thank you so much for all this invaluable GradCoach info, all the articles are on point it will make our live much easier.

Thank you Derek. Information you shared was helpful.

Great explanation – thank you! Is it possible to change the referencing style at the end of write-up? If so, how does one do this. Thanks again

RE: your video: Good short & to the point. I’ve ADHD & get bored within litterally seconds if the person presenting hasn’t got on with the point. This is key to ADHD people so will recommend you to others.

RE: my question: Does Medeley allow you split the reference docs into sections for the different areas of research I’m doing eg fungi, soil, bacteria, viruses etc?

Thanks in advance

Thank you! Helped with my bachelor

Hello, could you please tell me how to generate the code for “&” in the field “Citation”. For example: the code in the field “citation” is “CITATION Haw15 \l 1029 ” for “(Hawkins, a další, 2015)”. I need the citation in the form “Hawkins & Byrne 2015”

Thanks Derek for all the coaching. It’s a huge help for the literature review I’m doing. Tried to follow the steps from your video but the literature search function is not showing on my mendeley desktop. Did I miss a step in downloading it? I was able to download the reference manager and it was fine but I am a bit stuck with the mendeley desktop? Is there a separate video that shows the steps how to download the mendeley desktop?

I followed your video, however, what version of Mendeley has a Literature search, I cant find it in the Mendeley I installed.

Good day Derek. I’m a PhD student and have just listened to your videos, which are awesome! Thank you so much. I am also a Mendeley fan. However, I find it limiting in some aspects. Do you have any knowledge about how to use Mendeley with cloud storage and also using a cloud-based “Watch folder”? Thank you in advance.

I just want to say thanks so much. I had this software recommended to me from Uni and once I had downloaded it all I didn’t understand how it worked. After your video I now totally get it and this is going to make life so much easier. So thanks again.

how to put website citation and reference

How I should recover the icons missed from the taskbar, it’s already installed. now Mendeley is not visible

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Submit Comment

• Print Friendly

AI Tools To Automate Your Literature Review: Which To Use?

Researching and writing outa literature review can be a daunting task, but AI-powered tools like Semantic Scholar, Research Rabbit, and Scite are revolutionising this process.

These tools, leveraging artificial intelligence, automate the arduous task of sifting through mountains of academic papers, extracting key information, and summarizing relevant research.

In this article, lets explore how AI research assistants and advanced search engines streamline the literature review process, making it faster, more efficient, and thorough for conducting scientific research. Discover the best AI tools to transform your literature review work. 

Why Use AI Tools To Write Literature Review?

The vast sea of academic papers can be daunting. This is where AI tools like ChatGPT, Semantic Scholar, and Research Rabbit become indispensable.

AI tools for literature review are adept at sifting through millions of papers across various databases like PubMed and Google Scholar. They use AI algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) to identify relevant research articles, providing a summary of key information.

Some AI-powered research assistant such as Scite, uses AI to scan through research data, offering insights into the supporting or contrasting evidence within peer-reviewed papers. This can be a valuable tool for finding specific details in a systematic literature review.

These tools also streamline the literature search by automating the process of citation and reference management. Tools like Connected Papers and Research Rabbit are adept at evaluating and summarizing relevant academic papers, saving you time and effort.

They can extract key information from PDF documents and research articles, making it fast and easy to organize your findings.

AI-powered tools for literature review also help in creating a thorough literature search, essential for:

• Systematic literature reviews
• Meta-analyses, and
• Identifying research gap.

They can elicit information from a variety of sources, providing a comprehensive view of your research question. This approach ensures that your literature review is not only rich in content but also diverse in perspectives.

Best AI Tools To Write Literature Review

If you are looking at exploring AI tools to help you write literature review, consider these instead. They are revolutionizing the way literature reviews are conducted:

Connected Papers

As the name suggests, Connected Papers focuses on showing how various academic papers are interconnected. This generative AI tool helps you visualize the research landscape around your topic, making it easier to:

• Identify key papers,
• Identify potential gaps in your literature review, and
• Understand emerging trends in scientific research.

While not a traditional literature review tool, ChatGPT is revolutionising academic research by offering prompt-based assistance.

This chatbot-like AI tool can help automate parts of the literature review process, such as generating research questions or providing quick summaries of complex topics.

ChatGPT’s AI-driven insights can be a valuable starting point for deeper exploration into specific research areas. The key is to provide it with the right input, and then to give the right prompts.

Research Rabbit

This tool uses AI to scan a variety of sources, including peer-reviewed research data. It’s particularly useful for conducting systematic literature reviews, as it can evaluate and summarize relevant academic papers, highlighting supporting or contrasting evidence.

Its key features include mapping out connections between research papers, identifying key papers in a research area, and helping to understand how various research topics are interconnected.

Research Rabbit also excels in reference management, a vital component of academic writing.

Scite is an innovative tool that uses AI technologies to provide a new layer of insight into scientific literature.

It evaluates the credibility of research by analyzing citation contexts, helping you to identify the most impactful and relevant papers for your research question.

Scite’s most distinctive feature is its Smart Citations. Unlike traditional citations that merely count how often a paper is cited, Smart Citations provide context by showing how a paper has been cited. This means that for each citation, Scite shows you the other relevant papers that:

• Contrasts, or
• Mentioning evidence for the claims made in the original paper. 

As a result, Scite is invaluable for conducting thorough literature reviews, especially for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Semantic Scholar

This AI-powered research assistant stands out in its ability to sift through vast databases like PubMed and Google Scholar.

It uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) and AI algorithms to extract key information from millions of academic papers, offering concise summaries and identifying relevant research articles.

What sets Semantic Scholar apart is its AI algorithms. It analyses millions of academic publications, extracting key information such as:

• Figures, 
• Tables, as well as 
• Contextual relevance of each paper.

This enables the tool to provide highly relevant search results, summaries, and insights that are tailored to your specific interests and research needs.

What To Watch Out For When Writing Literature Review With AI Tools?

When you’re writing a literature review with AI tools, you’re stepping into a world where technology meets academic rigor. To ensure they balance each other out, by watching over these details as you use AI when researching:

Bias  

AI algorithms, including those used in literature search tools, can inherit biases from their training data.

This might skew the search results towards more popular or frequently cited papers, potentially overlooking lesser-known yet significant research.

Ensure you’re accessing a variety of sources to maintain a balanced perspective. When possible, always look into newer papers on your research area, as these may not have been discovered by your AI tool yet.

Citation Accuracy

While tools like Scite provide advanced citation analysis, the accuracy of AI in identifying and interpreting citations is not infallible.

Always verify the citations and references manually, especially when dealing with complex literature or less digitised sources.

You can also use multiple AI tools to check for citation accuracy. For example, rather than simply relying on Scite, you can also use other reference management softwares like: 

• Refworks, or

Contextual Understanding

AI tools, efficient as they are, might not fully grasp the nuanced context of your research question.

Tools like ChatGPT and Semantic Scholar provide summaries and identify relevant papers using natural language processing (NLP), but they may not always align perfectly with your specific research focus.

Always double-check that the AI’s interpretation matches your intended research angle. This means actually spending time to read articles within the research area, and become familiar with it. 

Depth of Analysis

AI tools can automate the initial stages of your literature review by quickly sifting through databases like PubMed and Google Scholar to find relevant papers.

However, they might not evaluate the depth and subtlety of arguments in academic writing as thoroughly as a human researcher would.

It’s crucial to supplement AI findings with your own detailed analysis. This means you should not rely on AI completely, but to actually roll up your sleeves and work on the analysis yourself as well.

Over-reliance on AI

There’s a temptation to overly rely on AI for streamlining every aspect of the literature review process.

Remember, AI is a tool to assist, not replace, your critical thinking and scholarly diligence.

Use AI to enhance your workflow but maintain an active role in evaluating and synthesising research data. See AI as a tool, not your replacement. You need to be there to pilot the AI tool, to ensure it is doing its job properly.

AI Tools For Literature Review: Keep Up With Times

Leveraging AI tools for your literature review is a game-changer. Tools like Semantic Scholar, Research Rabbit, and Scite, powered by advanced AI algorithms, not only automate the search for relevant papers but also provide critical summaries and evaluations.

They enhance the literature review process in academic research, making it more efficient and comprehensive.

As AI continues to evolve, these tools become indispensable for researchers, helping to streamline workflows, organize findings, and extract key insights from a vast array of scientific literature with unparalleled ease and speed.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

Thank you for visiting Academia Insider.

We are here to help you navigate Academia as painlessly as possible. We are supported by our readers and by visiting you are helping us earn a small amount through ads and affiliate revenue - Thank you!

2024 © Academia Insider

Demystifying the Literature Review: Writing the Review

• Getting Started
• Searching the Literature
• Writing the Review
• Getting Help

Use a Citation Manager to Track & Critique Results

• Zotero Zotero is a free, powerful, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze citations and sources such as pdfs and Web sites, and then share the results of your research.
• Mendeley Mendley is a citation management software program: a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Think of it as a personal research assistant: it helps you manage your information by downloading citations directly from publisher websites or databases (where available) or directly importing full-text PDF articles. It also allows you to enter citations manually.
• EndNote EndNote is citation management software produced by Clarivate. A free 30-day trial is available through EndNote. The software can be purchased at the Campus Store. Two Cornell colleges offer their communities free access to Endnote via site license: Human Ecology (under Software) and Agriculture & Life Sciences.

The Ethics of Scholarly Work

Points to remember from Machi and McEvoy ( The literature review: Six steps to success . Corwin Press, 2016.)

• Do not take data out of context
• Do your own research
• Present only what you believe to be factual
• Present all sides of the question
• Plagiarism can easily sneak into a review unless it is carefully avoided
• You must be the sole writer of your literature review

Write the Final Review

When to stop searching.

• << Previous: Searching the Literature
• Next: Getting Help >>
• Last Updated: Jan 27, 2023 1:19 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/literature_review