Reference/citation managers generally:

 There are several free (, ) or pay‐for‐use (Endnote) options out there, it doesn’t really matter what you choose, but you should DEFINITELY learn how to use one of these tools properly  Will help you organize your research and can allow you to save both the and your notes in a searchable way for future citation  Makes formatting bibliographies for publication much, much, easier (and is really the only sane way to do numerical citations)  Use one at the START of your research, not just when it comes time to write/publish to get the most utility out of the tool

Mendeley specifically

File organization

 Toolsoptionsfile organizercan choose location for files, file naming, and file organization  Folders in Mendeley, you can organize into folders, but they’re still all accessible in all documents, only one copy stored, accessible from multiple folders, if you click on the paper, the folders it appears in will be highlighted  You can star papers, sort by read vs. unread, sort by or no pdf, search by author, etc.  Needs review: check out which ones need help, and sometimes need to enter data by hand  You can add notes both at the whole paper level, and specific notes related to different parts  Search for duplicates, how the differences between potential duplicates are displayed is not super intuitive, so get familiar with this.  Unless you are working in multiple fields with almost NO overlap, you will want to save everything to “My Library” and then further organize with folders within. No need to have multiple libraries unless you like to import the same references a bunch of times for fun!

Importing papers:

 Drag and drop: To import papers, you can drag and drop into Mendeley, and will automatically read  Import citations: You can also import citations as . format (works better for things in Jstore, which always get completely boned on auto‐import)  Add “save to Mendeley” to your bookmarks bar

Exporting and sharing references:

 Old fashioned: To select citations to export, you can select them, in mendeley and then click “open containing folder”, this will open your mendeley folder and highlight the papers, so you can drag them into an e‐mail etc…  Send by email: sends in a format that only works with Mendeley users, but shares the papers AND your notes  You can also copy formatted references from Mendeley to paste into an email (right click Copy as Formatted citation)

Using the MS word plugin to cite papers and format your bibliography:

ToolsInstall MS word plugin

Activate add‐in in word

Inline citations in MS word:

 Within word, select cite, and then search for the appropriate paper by author, year, etc. Make sure you select the resource you want to search in and that this is consistent throughout! “My Library” is the safest resource to use, but this won’t work if you’re planning to edit references collaboratively.  If you can’t find it that way, choose “go to Mendeley”, find and highlight the paper, and then click the cite button  To cite multiple, either select multiple in Mendeley and then click “cite” or type in one after another.  You can add details prefix, suffix, or suppress author by selecting the citation, clicking “edit citation” in the menu bar, and then clicking on the citation in the window that pops up. Any other edits made inside the citation parentheses will be overwritten when you refresh!  At the end of your document click Insert Bibliography, and a formatted bibliography will be added using the style of your choice.

Different citation styles for your publication needs:

 You can update the style in the menu bar, but there’s a pretty limited list. To add a style, click on the dropdown in the menu bar, choose “more styles”. This will give you a list of the installed styles.  To install a new style, Click on the “Get more styles” tab and search for your style to install.  If your style still isn’t there, go to the journal website and find the link for the Mendeley style (most journals have this). You can then type this link into the bottom of the “get more styles” tab  In a pinch, you can create your own style in one of two ways: o Use the CSL editor (online). Click the “about” tab for more information. Start with a style that’s close, right click to open the online CLS editor, and then edit it to suit (see: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/csl‐editor/01‐overview‐csl‐editor) o Alternatively edit the .csl files directly User/AppData/Local/Mendeley Ltd/Mendeley Desktop/citation styles‐1.0 in notepad or similar. This is pretty easy for small changes, but you can mess it up pretty badly for the bigger changes if you’re not careful. (see: https://blog.mendeley.com/2011/05/03/howto‐edit‐citation‐styles‐for‐use‐in‐ mendeley/)

Sharing and collaboration:  Sharing for review by coauthors/editors who WON’T be editing citations: o Usually it is safe to just send the document without breaking the Mendeley connection as long as your co‐authors won’t be actively trying to edit the references o To share without Mendeley connections: In menu bar, choose References Export Export without Mendeley fields. Will create a new document with fields stripped. Unfortunately, you will need to re‐enter citations to get the fields back, which can be a big job  Sharing for reference collaboration: o You need to begin by creating a group (bottom left), make it private and share with the mendeley users you want to collaborate with o Private group: can share PDFs, each free user can only create and own 1 group but can be a member of as many as they like, free private groups can only have 3 members, free user storage limit is 2GB o You can drag and drop items from your library into the group, or add items directly to the group o In settings you can choose to synchronize files from the group o A group DOES NOT equate to a folder in your library and the files in the group aren’t automatically added to your library. You can drag files from your group to your library, but these will not then continue to sync with the group, instead you will have 2 copies. This can cause problems. o Beware of using the cite‐O‐matic tool from a group. You must actively select the group before you search for citations, and if any of your citation strings end up containing different sources (i.e. one citation from your library and one from your group), the whole citation will break and must be REPLACED, not edited. Also it will make Mendeley crash (at least on my machine). I can’t find a good way to search out and replace citations from the “wrong” source. o If you do a big overhaul of citations, especially merging duplicates, this can cause big problems for active documents. The “merge” tool actually deletes one of the documents, and you may get an error message upon opening your word document that many of your files have been deleted, would you like to restore them from the trash or use the similar document that Mendeley found. These similar documents are usually correct, BUT also in your library, so your citations will all get messed up if you were trying to cite from a group