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Subject guides

Reference Management: Mendeley

How to manage your references using software

Where to get help

The Mendeley guidebook covers all components of the software and is user friendly. 

The University of Huddersfield librarians are always happy to help!

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley Reference Manager is a free web and desktop reference management application. It helps you to store and manage your references in one place.

How do I access Mendeley?

Go to Mendeley.com and select the download link to download the software to your desktop. Please select the create account link and use any email to set up your account. 

A screenshot of the Mendeley homepage. The download and create account links sit in the top right hand corner of the page.

Once you have logged into Mendeley, please select the tools link and download the Mendeley web importer and the Mendeley cite for Microsoft Word. 

 A screenshot of the Mendeley platform. The tools link to sits at the top of the screen.

Saving items into Mendeley

There are numerous ways of adding citations into Mendeley. 

Once you have installed the Mendeley web importer. It will sit at the top of the browser, where your browser extensions sit. 

The Mendeley icon next to other icons in the browser extensions.

When clicking on the Mendeley icon, the software will identify the citations displaying on your current page. Click on the citations you wish to add and then select 'add' to import them into your library. 

 A drop down of different citations.  

Mendeley also allows you to import references by:

  • Drag and dropping PDFs from your computer
  • Importing RIS files from your computer
  • Manually creating an entry. 

Citing with Mendeley

Open your Word document, the Mendeley icon will appear at the top of your tool bar within the References section. 

Word's ribbon with Mendeley displaying in the references section.

 Once selected a sidebar will open which displays the titles recently added to your library. Select the item you wish to insert, or search for the title or author to select a different title and click Insert. This will input the in-text citation into the Word document. To check the correct citation style, click on Citation Settings and select the appropriate style. If you can not see the required style, scroll to the bottom and select more styles to search for a citation style. 

Mendeley cite pop out box, displaying a list of citations that have been recently added with tick boxes next to them ready to insert into the document.

Once you have finished inputting your in-text citations, click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner and select create bibliography. This will create your full reference list in alphabetical order. 

 

Mendeley videos