LibGuides: Reference Management Software: Mendeley

Notice

There is an ongoing issue with accessing Mendeley desktop when signing in via institution. You may get a 'stale request' error message when trying to sign in via the University.

If you are a new user, accessing Mendeley for the first time, we recommend that you use a personal email address - this will mean that you are not affected by this error.
If you have an existing account using your university details, we recommend that you add a password to your existing Mendeley account which will bypass the institutional sign-on issue affecting a number of universities.

Elsevier have provided instructions on how to add a password to an existing account that has been set up using an institutional login. Alternatively, you can try to log out of your Mendeley desktop (help>reset mendeley) and then select the 'reset password' option. Once you have reset the password associated with the account using your university email address you can use this to log back into Mendeley desktop.

Mendeley

Mendeley - is both a free reference manager and an academic social network designed to help researchers find and work with collaborators. There is a Mendeley Quick Start Guide available.

Step one: create an account

Mendeley is free to use, but you will need to set up a personal account.

You can create an account and sign-in using your University email address and password for easy access to Mendeley.

You then have the choice of either accessing Mendeley through the desktop version, which can download using the link in the quick start guide above, or you can create an account and use the web version which does not require that you download any software.

Step two: integrate your references into Word documents

It is possible to install a Mendeley plug-in in Word 365 to streamline your referencing. Watch the video below for instructions on how to install and use the plug-in.

If you have any difficulty installing or using the plug-in, you can instead use the Mendeley Web version and the built-in citation tool within Word - please see the instructions in the adjacent tab for further details.

Using Mendeley Web with Word's built-in citation tool

1. Export your references from your Mendeley Web Library:

Open your Mendeley Web Library.
Select the references you want to export.
From the options at the bottom of the screen, select Export and then Microsoft Word (*.xml).

2. Import your references into the Microsoft Word Citation Manager:

Go to “References” and in the 'Citations and Bibliography' section, click on Manage Sources.
Click on Browse, navigate to the file you just downloaded and click on OK.
Your references will appear in the left hand pane. Select the reference(s) you wish to use and click on Copy, so they appear in the right hand pane.
Click on Close.

3. Insert references into your document:

In the 'Citations and Bibliography' section, click on Insert Citation.
Select your reference from the list.

Editing Mendeley References

References produced by Mendeley may not always be accurate, and you may sometimes need to edit them to ensure that they are correct and align with University of Exeter style guidelines as detailed in Cite Them Right. In Mendeley, there are a few ways to do this:

Edit aspects of individual references directly in your Mendeley library.

Manually override a citation in word by highlighting the citation in your document and then choosing the "manually override" option in the Mendeley editor on the right-hand side, or selecting the citation.

Manually override a citation in Mendeley

To change an entire referencing style, you can create a custom style in the Mendeley CSL Editor, either by using an existing style as a template, or creating your own style from scratch. A guide on doing this is available here.

editing referencing style in Mendeley CSL editor

Mendeley Word plug in issue

If the Mendeley Word plug in is no longer working for you please follow the troubleshooting instructions below:

https://service.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23237/supporthub/mendeley/p/16075/