Mendeley helps you organise literature, annotate sources and manage citations as part of academic reading and writing. You can import references, build a personal library, add notes and PDF annotations, generate citations in Word through Mendeley Cite, and share references with others, which makes the tool useful in research skills teaching, thesis supervision and collaborative literature work. Official Mendeley guidance highlights organising references, annotating PDFs and working with shared libraries as core parts of the workflow.
- Functions
- Group collaboration | Research & writing
- Via Canvas
- Standalone
- Difficulty of use
- Moderate
Examples of use in your education
Use Mendeley when you want students to start collecting and organising sources early, instead of leaving reference management until the writing stage.
You can apply this tool in your teaching in several concrete ways:
Library setup - In a research skills session, show students how to build a personal library for a project or thesis and add their first set of relevant articles.
Theme organisation - Ask students to organise references by theme, method or relevance when they need a clearer overview of the literature they are reading.
Research structure - Ask students to organise their library into groups that reflect chapters, themes or parts of the research question, and use that structure in supervision to discuss where the reading is already strong and where important perspectives are still missing.
Source curation - Ask students to keep their main working library focused by removing duplicates and moving less relevant or [maybe later] sources into a separate collection, so the library remains usable without losing potentially useful material altogether.
Tip 1
Ask students to review and reorganise their library at several moments in the project, so the structure continues to reflect their actual research direction.
Tip 2
Use categories or tags that connect directly to the assignment, for example theory, method or case material, so the organisation supports later writing.
Use Mendeley when you want students to treat reading as an active research activity rather than only collecting PDFs.
You can apply this tool in your teaching in several concrete ways:
PDF annotation - Ask students to highlight and annotate PDFs when they need to identify arguments, concepts or methodological features while reading.
Reading notes - Encourage students to add short summaries or comments to references so they can later remember why a source matters.
Comparative reading - Use students’ annotations as the starting point for discussing why some sources are more useful or persuasive than others.
Evidence tracking - Ask students to note where a source is strongest, weakest or most relevant to their developing argument, so literature work feeds directly into writing and supervision.
Tip 1
Ask students to write one short note on relevance for each important source, so they can reconnect the reading to their research question later.
Tip 2
Model one annotated article in class first, so students see what useful notes look like before they annotate their own library.
Use Mendeley when you want to support citation practice and show students how source management connects to transparent academic writing.
You can apply this tool in your teaching in several concrete ways:
Citing in Word - Demonstrate how students can insert citations and generate bibliographies while writing, so they understand how reference management supports rather than interrupts the writing process.
Style comparison - Use the tool to compare citation styles that matter in your programme, so students see how formatting conventions differ without having to rebuild references manually.
Integrity support - Use citation practice to discuss academic integrity, especially when students need to understand that a reference manager supports but does not replace critical source use.
Draft checking - During writing support, ask students to use their library alongside a draft so you can discuss whether the cited sources actually match the argument they are making.
Tip 1
Make clear that automatic citation generation still needs human checking, especially when students work with edited volumes, unusual sources or incomplete metadata.
Tip 2
Use a short draft exercise in class so students can practice citing from their own library instead of only watching a demonstration.
How-to videos
How to use Mendeley Reference Manager
How to referencing in Microsoft Word with Mendeley Reference Manager
How to use Mendeley Reference Manager with examples
Getting started
- You can find all the relevant information on the official site of Mendeley.
- You can find the official guide to Mendeley Reference Manager here.
Support
In case of educational questions, please contact your learning innovator or web team from your faculty.
In case of technical difficulty, please consult the Mendeley Help Centre.
