Mendeley is a reference manager, academic collaboration network and crowdsourced database with a unique layer of social information research. Mendeley Desktop is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Mendeley Web functions on all major browsers. Mobile versions of Mendeley are available for Ipad, Iphone and Android devices. Go to Mendeley's Support Centre for a list of supported browsers and operating systems.
| Operating system | Supported versions |
| Windows |
x64 and x86 of the following operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 – Version 1803 |
| Mac |
macOS 10.10 (Yosemite), macOS 10.11 (El Capitan), macOS 10.12 (Sierra), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) Not yet supported: macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.15 (Catalina) |
| Linux |
x64 and x86 of the following operating Systems: Ubuntu and Kubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), Ubuntu and Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Debian Stretch 9. For lists of releases see Debian and Ubuntu |
Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Web provide two distinctly different ways to interact with your Mendeley library and other researchers. Here is a quick comparison of the differences.
Mendeley Web focuses on connecting researchers. With Mendeley Web, you can:
Create and share a scholarly profile with the Web (or with only other Mendeley users, depending on how you configure the settings);
Search Mendeley for relevant scholarly literature on any topic;
Create, join, and manage groups;
Discover articles that are trending in your research area;
View altmetrics on any article, such as the number of readers in Mendeley, their disciplines, and their level of scholarship (i.e., faculty, postdoc, other);
Add, edit, and organize your references;
View PDFs that have been uploaded to your Mendeley cloud.
Mendeley Desktop focuses on knowledge production and management. With Mendeley Desktop, you can:
Search Mendeley for relevant scholarly literature on any topic;
Create and manage groups;
Add, edit, and organize your references;
Link Mendeley to Microsoft Word and/or create a BibTeX library for a seamless writing experience;
Set your default citation style (for auto-generated citations);
Connect citations to PDFs on your computer (or import PDFs directly into Mendeley) for easy PDF management;
Annotate and mark up PDFs that are linked to citations within your library;
Link multiple PDFs and documents to a single reference record within your library.
In short, if you want to manage your reference library and/or use a reference manager for writing, Mendeley Desktop is the way to go. If you want to engage with the social component of Mendeley or access citations/articles on the go, Mendeley Web is a perfect supplement.
1. Join the Mendeley Academic Collaboration Network
Create an account and join over 6 million researchers building their own research network.
2. Import Your Reference Libraries from other Reference Managers such as EndNote and RefWorks
Download the Mendeley Migration Guide from this page to get started.
3. Join one of thousands of Public Groups or start your own Public Group.
4. Create a Private Group and collaborate with colleagues by reading and annotating together.
Find out more in our dedicated guide to private groups.
5. Discover Readership Statistics about the paper you are reading.
Browse Mendeley’s crowd-sourced research catalog of millions of papers.
6. Showcase your publication history.
7. Choose from nearly 7,000 citation styles or create your own!
Use the CSL Editor to explore and modify existing styles. Automatically download journal styles from Elsevier's Author Guides.
8. Drag and drop PDFs automatically extract metadata about research papers.
9. Enable the File Organizer to bring order to your stored files.
Mendeley saves your references in the cloud, but you can also opt to download local copies and automatically rename the PDFs using a naming scheme you specify.
10. Mendeley Desktop is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. Mendeley Web functions on all major browsers.
For more details, visit Mendley's dedicated resource center.