Thing 14: Mendeley, Ranting about Reference Software, & Ignoring CiteUlike

So I tried out Mendeley last week. If Evernote & Zotero were to combine, I feel that Mendeley would've been the outcome. Like Evernote, Mendeley allows you to save, organize, and take notes on articles. Like Zotero, Mendeley pulls the bibliographic information from your articles and allows you make citations. The nice thing about Mendeley is that it syncs with your other devices...so you can use it on other computers, laptops, and  tablets (provided you've downloaded the software and logged in).

With all that being said, a word to the wise about Zotero and other Bibliographic Citation programs; I know when you encounter it for the first time...it seems magical. Your eyes sparkle with all the possibilities of the things you can do with the extra time you'll save on your paper. You shake your fists thinking of all the precious moments you've wasted doing things the hard way. Be cautious my eager friends! The citations made be the programs are not always correct...make sure you double check your work.

It's not Zotero's fault that it could not pull all the information from your downloaded article and left out information it's yours! To be fair, most of the time it's the fault of the information contained in the PDF file. Some PDF files....especially older ones aren't able to be properly "read" by Biblio Cite Software.

It was in with this issue I found Mendeley to be more helpful. Mendeley asks you to VERIFY the bibliographic information and gives you the option of using Google Scholar to find and fill in any missing information. CLICK THE IMAGES BELOW TO ENLARGE

some of the info is missing? (vol? issue?)

yay! Mendeley found it using Google Scholar!

Another suggestion...often academic databases and journal archives will often have a spot that will provide the correct citation for you works cited...on their page. Yes, I know it doesn't help with in text citations but it's useful. For example here is a screen shot from EBSCO.
CLICK THE IMAGES BELOW TO ENLARGE