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Citation Management Tools

Organization

See also Mendeley's Guide to Organizing Your Mendeley Library

You can use Collections in Mendeley Reference Manager to organize your documents in whatever collections make sense to you. Documents can be in more than one collection. Look for the New Collection link in the left pane in Mendeley Reference Manager.

You can assign tags to each document in your Library and use these tags to help to locate and organize documents.

You can also use the star icon to add documents to your Favorites list, and mark documents as read or unread using the green dots.

Mendeley Library Organization Tools

In Mendeley Reference Manager, click the PDF icon or doubleclick the entry in your Library to open a document in the PDF Viewer.

PDF reader options

In the PDF Viewer you can:

  • Search within the text of the document (using search box in upper right of toolbar) and view the highlighted search terms
  • Highlight text or rectangles in the document with the highlighter tool
  • Add 'sticky notes' to annotate the text anywhere in the document.
  • Text of sticky notes can be viewed in the Annotations tab, which you find under Info. You can also add other notes about the paper in this tab under General Notes.

See also Mendeley's Guide to Reading and Annotating Your Documents.

Mendeley Notebook can be used to keep track of notes on a particular topic or project that may pertain to multiple references in your Mendeley library (notes about a specific reference can go in the General Notes field under Annotations). You can have multiple Notebook pages saved under different titles. You can add your own free text (notes) to your Mendeley Notebook, and can also choose highlighted text from multiple papers to show up in your notebook. This is a way to collect quotes or facts that you might want to refer back to in your own writing.

Mendeley Notebook

Using Mendeley While You Write

You can use Mendeley Cite to insert citations and create bibliographies in Microsoft Word. The Desktop Citation Plug-in also works with LibreOffice (Mendeley Cite does not). Mendeley is also compatible with Overleaf. If you prefer to write in Google Docs, the citation managers Zotero and RefWorks have Google Doc integrations.

Mendeley with Overleaf

Mendeley is compatible with Overleaf (formerly WriteLaTeX).

Inserting Citations and Creating a Bibliography (Mendeley Desktop Citation Plug-In)

Note that Mendeley Desktop, which is required to use the Desktop Plugin, is no longer available to download from Mendeley; these instructions only apply to those who already have Mendeley Desktop installed. See also Mendeley's Guide to Using the Citation Plugin

Insert a citation

Once you have installed the citation plugin, you are ready to add citations to documents in MS Word. To insert a citation:

  • Place your cursor where you want the citation.
  • Depending on your version of MS Word: Select the References tab and locate the Mendeley Cite-O-Matic options (PC); or look for the Mendeley toolbar or Mendeley menu (Mac).
  • Click the Insert Citation button and search for references by author, title, or year from your Mendeley Library. References can also be added from Groups - just change the drop-down menu from My Library to one of your Groups.
  • After a reference has been selected, you have the option to add another reference to the same citation. When done, click OK.  
  • After a citation has been inserted, you may change the citation style using the Style drop-down box. 

Cite-o-matic

MS Word floating mendeley toolbar

 

 

Mendeley Menu on Mac

Create a Bibliography

  • After at least one citation has been added to your document, place your cursor where you want your bibliography, then select the Insert Bibliography option. Click the Refresh option to update the bibliography as you add more citations.

Note, Mendeley Cite is a new product. If you are still using Mendeley Desktop and want to continue to use the Mendeley Desktop Citation Plugin, you should be able to. What may create problems is to use both simultaneously, so it is recommended that you uninstall the Mendeley Desktop Citation Plugin in Word if you have successfully installed Mendeley Cite and plan to use that.

For Mendeley's instructions on using Mendeley Cite to insert and edit citations and create bibliographies in MS Word, see Getting Started with Mendeley Cite.

Mendeley Cite will appear as a sidebar in your Word document. You may need to enable it by going to My Add-ins (under the Insert menu), or you may find it in the References menu. You will need to sign in with your Mendeley credentials to use Mendeley Cite.

After placing your cursor where you want a citation to appear, find and add citations in the References tab of Mendeley Cite. You can set your citation style and language in the Citations Setting tab, and will find the option to Insert Bibliography under the 3-dot menu. Below the Insert Bibliography option is an option to Update From Library or Refresh References; this updates your bibliography and in-text citations with any changes you have made to references in your Mendeley library or as you add / delete citations from your Word doc.

Mendeley Cite

After adding a citation to your document, selecting it in your document will bring up the option to edit it, including options to add page numbers, suppress authors, etc. You will also see an option to manually override the citation with text of your choosing.

editing citation

Finding, Modifying, and Creating Citation Styles