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Mendeley Reference Manager

Introduction to Mendeley Desktop for organizing references and generating in-text citations and bibliographies.

Getting Started

Please refer to Mendeley Quick Start for instructions and links to resources that will help you begin using Mendeley. I invite you to email me with any questions you have or to schedule an individual consultation for personal assistance.

Managing Citations with Mendeley Workshop (video)

Managing Citations with Mendeley Workshop | Kimberly Vardeman

Archived recording of presentation on September 14, 2020

This 1-hour workshop will provide you with a beginner-level overview of Mendeley Desktop, a citation manager used to organize references, create a searchable library of research articles, and generate in-text citations and bibliographies. References saved to a Mendeley account are accessible from any device using the desktop software or by visiting Mendeley.com.

This workshop covers how to create a Mendeley account and install the software and plug-ins; import PDFs into Mendeley, organize a reference library, and search for new citations to add; and generate reference lists in Microsoft Word.

About Mendeley

Mendeley is a free reference manager. Make your own fully-searchable library in seconds, cite as you write, and read and annotate your PDFs. Your Mendeley library will still be available to you if you leave Texas Tech.

Why Cite?

 It is important to credit the authors of the resources you consulted in your research. This credit is given through a proper citation that includes the original author's name, the title of the work, the date of publicationinformation enabling others to access the research you cited. You should cite sources when
  • you use a direct or indirect quotation.
  • you paraphrase or summarize someone else's writing.
  • you refer to someone else's research or ideas.
Reasons for citing resources:
  • Avoiding plagiarism and academic dishonesty
  • Demonstrating the originality of your research by distinguishing your ideas from those expressed by other scholars
  • Showing that you examined related research
There are multiple steps to citing your resources properly. These may include
  • Creating a list of citations for the resources for a bibliography, works cited, or reference list.
  • Citing the resources in footnotes or endnotes.
  • Citing the resources in the text of your document.
  • Obtaining permission to use a quote or content created by someone else.