What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is a free reference management platform owned by Elsevier that helps researchers organize, annotate, cite, and share their research literature. It provides a clean desktop application and web interface for building a personal or collaborative library, with automatic metadata extraction from uploaded PDFs reducing manual data entry. Mendeley's Word plugin (Mendeley Cite) enables seamless in-text citation insertion and bibliography generation in thousands of citation styles directly within Microsoft Word. In December 2025, Mendeley launched a new suite of AI features under the branding of an AI-powered research workspace, including Ask My Library for querying your own PDF collection, a Reading Assistant for PDF Q&A with citations, and Compare Experiments for cross-document analysis. Cloud sync keeps your library updated across desktop and web with 2GB of free storage. Group libraries with permission controls allow teams to share PDFs and annotations for collaborative research. Mendeley also integrates with Scopus and ScienceDirect for seamless import from Elsevier's academic databases, making it a natural fit for researchers who work within the Elsevier publishing ecosystem.

Key Features

Reference Library OrganizationAutomatic PDF Metadata ExtractionPDF Annotation and HighlightingMendeley Cite Word PluginCloud Sync Across DevicesGroup Libraries with Permissions2GB Free Cloud StorageAsk My Library AI FeatureAI Reading AssistantCompare Experiments Cross-Document AIScopus and ScienceDirect IntegrationWeb Importer Browser ExtensionBibTeX and RIS ExportFull-Text PDF SearchSmart Collection SuggestionsMulti-Platform SupportCitation Style Library

How to Use Mendeley

1Download Mendeley Reference Manager or use the web app at mendeley.com

2Install the Mendeley Web Importer browser extension

3Upload PDFs or import references from Scopus, PubMed, or Google Scholar

4Annotate PDFs and organize references into collections

5Use Mendeley Cite in Word to insert citations and generate bibliographies

✅ Best For

Researchers and students deeply embedded in the Elsevier publishing ecosystem who benefit from seamless one-click import from Scopus and ScienceDirect and want a clean, polished reference manager with strong Word integration.
Academic teams and research groups who need shared collaborative libraries with permission controls for managing a joint bibliography on group projects, institutional reviews, or multi-author papers.
Researchers transitioning from other reference managers who want a free, reliable tool with automatic metadata extraction, cross-device cloud sync, and a proven Word plugin for in-text citation management.

❌ Not For

Researchers who prioritize open-source software and data ownership, since Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, a major commercial publisher, and some academics have raised privacy concerns about how reading data and library habits may be used.
Power users who need an extensive plugin ecosystem, custom workflows, or advanced AI research agents, since Mendeley's AI features are newer and less mature than dedicated AI research tools like Elicit, SciSpace, or PapersFlow.

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to review Mendeley!

Pricing

Free$0

✓Unlimited references
✓2GB cloud storage
✓PDF annotation
✓Word plugin
✓group libraries

PremiumCustom

✓AI research workspace features (Ask My Library
✓Reading Assistant
✓Compare Experiments)

Prompts to Try

Find all papers in my library that mention machine learning and diabetes

Compare the methodology sections of these three clinical trial papers

Generate an APA 7 bibliography from my saved collection on climate change

Use Cases

A biomedical PhD student uses Mendeley's Scopus integration to save 30 papers from a search with one click, auto-extracts metadata for all of them, and inserts 15 citations into her thesis chapter in Word using Mendeley Cite in under 20 minutes.

A research lab with eight members sets up a shared Mendeley group library for their oncology project, allowing every team member to annotate PDFs and contribute references that sync automatically for the entire group.

A professor uses Mendeley's new AI Reading Assistant to query a dense methodology PDF uploaded by a graduate student, asking targeted questions about the statistical approach and getting cited paragraph-level answers in seconds.

A postdoc uses Mendeley's Ask My Library feature to search across his 200-paper personal collection for all studies mentioning cognitive load in e-learning, getting an AI-generated summary that he uses as a starting point for his literature review section.

A research institution deploys Mendeley across 50 researchers, leveraging its Elsevier integrations and collaborative group library features to maintain a unified, institution-wide reference database for ongoing multi-center clinical trials.

Alternatives to Mendeley

Connected PapersAI Research

Visual academic paper discovery tool that generates a similarity graph of related research from a single seed paper.

Visit Website →

ConsensusAI Research

AI academic search engine that scans 200M+ peer-reviewed papers and shows the scientific consensus on any question.

Visit Website →

ElicitAI Research

AI research assistant that searches 138M+ academic papers and automates literature reviews with sentence-level citations.

Visit Website →

ExplainpaperAI Research

AI tool that explains confusing passages in research papers instantly, letting you highlight any text and get a plain-language explanation powered by GPT.

Visit Website →

LateralAI Research

AI research workspace for literature reviews that organized PDFs, auto-generated findings tables, and ran semantic search across documents. Sunset June 2025.

Visit Website →