Mendeley is a simple, effective reference management tool. A free account with 2GB of storage space can be created on the Mendeley website.
NB: UoW does not have an institutional subscription to Mendeley. When you create an account, do not select 'Sign in via your institution' — make an individual account instead.
Mendeley is currently undergoing a transition period. Consequently, there are two different software products currently available:
Which product you should choose to use will depend on the following factors:
Chris Copeland has produced a very good three-part introduction to Mendeley Desktop from the user's perspective. Access his YouTube playlist below:
Recorded 21/06/21.
While of value in generating citations and references, for example, either manually or through a plug-in to Word, Mendeley also acts as a file manager, content index and fully-searchable digital library database, at an individual level and at a collective level.
As a PDF reader, it permits highlighting, copy-and-paste and comment functions on the document. It is therefore well worth considering as a tool which assists in the search, curation and analysis phases of research, greatly enhancing 'productivity'.
It has an online version and a desktop version, while it also works on tablets (mainly for reading and annotating) and mobile phones (mainly for reading).
The Westminster Harvard citation and referencing style can be installed on Mendeley desktop, to generate citations and references in the required format, and a Mendeley plug-in can be installed in Word, so that citations and references can be created automatically.