If we describe it as short as possible, Mendeley Desktop is a research tool. It can also turn into a no more than simply a personal bookmarking tool in the hands of some individuals who are in need of a better method in organizing their bookmarks.

References that are collected during a research can get cluttered more quickly than expectations, which is why a file organizer such as Mendeley Desktop is desperately needed. Mendeley Desktop is a part of Mendeley digital ecosystem that functions as a client software installed on a desktop operating system.

Features and Highlights

Mendeley Desktop is often compared to Zotero. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages that can make you confused on which one to use unless you are the type of users who always prefer open source software.

Mendeley Desktop is owned by Elsevier. The academic publisher bought it in early 2013, a move which upset the scientific community. This fact alone is enough to make many users hesitant and eventually use Zotero, an open source alternative armed with competitive features.

If the acquisition doesn’t bother you, if the proprietary license is not a deal breaker for you, then the first thing that you should know about Mendeley Desktop is that it requires an internet connection to start with. An account must be made online. You’ll get a free cloud storage as much as 2 GB after you finish creating a Mendeley account, which is much larger than Zotero’s free offer.

Adding documents in Mendeley Desktop is as easy as dragging and dropping your PDF file into its main interface. It supports batch addition which means that you can drag and drop multiple PDF files at the same time. The details of each PDF will be automatically extracted, such as authors and the title of the paper, and used to create an entry in the library.

Adding a document can also be done by clicking the Add Files button. If you have a document that is not a PDF, you can create an entry for it by entering the details of the document manually. There is also an option to transfer your library from Zotero and other citation management software to Mendeley Desktop.

By using its extension which is available for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, you can also add documents from online databases in a few clicks. The extension is called Mendeley Web Importer.

The collected items in Mendeley Desktop can be organized by creating folders, subfolders, tags, and favorites. To search a reference, there is a context- aware search functionality. If you perform a search while viewing a particular folder, the scope of the search will be limited to that folder only. Only when ‘All Documents’ is selected then the search will scour the entire library to find the item you need to access.

Mendeley Desktop Free Download for Windows

Mendeley Desktop has been one of the most popular choices when it comes to managing citations. It can add, organize, and search references. Its free cloud storage is fairly generous. It has an easy-to-use extension to add webpages into the library, supports Citation Style Language, and allows you to annotate PDFs. You can click the link below to download Mendeley Desktop for Windows: