Mendeley Citation Management Software

Mendeley is online software to help you:

• find and save citation information from articles
• organize your research
• create footnotes (or in-text citations) and bibliographies

Installing Mendeley components:

• Getting started with Mendeley Reference Manager
• Getting started with Mendeley Web Importer
• Getting started with Mendeley Cite for Microsoft Word
   
• Mendeley FAQs

My citations have errors - now what? It is normal to see misplaced or missing information in a software-generated footnote. Mendeley reads and saves the information it finds online, but that information is not always correct. All footnotes and bibliographies created with Mendeley should be checked for two common problems: missing information, and formatting variations. 

How do I check Mendeley citations? Use a style guide for the citation style you are using. For example, these are guides for Chicago Style.

These issues commonly need to be corrected:

• TITLES IN ALL CAPS. This is incorrect; no citation style does this. For example, Chicago style uses title case. For other styles, make sure you check the requirement for which words in titles need to be capitalized.
• Article from an academic source with no DOI. Most citation styles now incorporate a DOI, if it is available. Most scholarly articles published since 2012 have a DOI.
• Web site with no author. This is likely incorrect. Most web sites should be cited with an author: check Purdue OWL for more information.
• E-book with no publisher. This is incorrect; all books should be cited with a publisher.

How to correct, or add missing information to, a Mendeley reference

Good news: making changes is easy! Just go to the source information first: correct the citation information in your Mendeley reference manager.

Then click "Refresh" in your document:

1. Open the document
2. Find Mendeley Cite
3. Select more, then Refresh.

How to make formatting changes to Mendeley footnotes or bibliography (Unlinking from Mendeley)

To change the formatting (indentation, spacing, order of entries etc.) of a Mendeley footnote or bibliography, you must first unlink your document from Mendeley. Unlinking is IRREVERSIBLE: once you unlink you will not be able to use Mendeley's features anymore, so you should wait to unlink until you have a final copy.

Once all of your footnotes and bibliography entries have been entered into your document, then use these steps to unlink.

(warning: do not change the formatting of citations in your document without unlinking first. If you don't unlink, your changes will automatically reverse, the next time you re-open your document.)