Mendeley: An Online Software for Reference Management in Research

Abstract

Research is a systematic effort to gain new knowledge. A researcher has to collect a lot of existing information resources in the specific domain of knowledge for persuing research. Due to Information and communication technology most of the information resources are appearing now in electronic format. The range of information resources varies from e-books, e-journals, databases, images, power-point presentations, audio and video resources. After collecting the resources, the researcher has to organize it in personal computers or on web for further study and consultation. Reference is a link or relationship between two objects in which one gives acknowledgement to other. Mendeley is an online software for researchers not only to collect and store their items, but also to organize, tag them, save the resources and create citation and bibliography automatically in standard formats. Researchers can save their precious time by using this software, which was earlier done manually and consumed a lot of time during the research process. The article introduces online softwares for reference management i.e. Mendeley, Zotero and Endnote. It further highlights how Mendeley can help a researcher in creating personal digital library, reference management, as a social networking site and the other facilities which are very useful for academia and researchers. This software can be used free of cost up-to a certain limit of storage space on cloud.