Reference Management

Things to consider
You can use both Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Reference Manager on your computer at the same time, and they will sync to the cloud and share your references. However, the new in-text citation tool, Mendeley Cite, uses a different Microsoft Word function to the legacy Cite-O-Matic tool. 

If you are working on a Word document with citations inserted from Mendeley Desktop and the Cite-O-Matic tool, you may wish to continue using those Mendeley products until that document is completed.  Then you can start a new document using Mendeley Reference Manager and the Mendeley Cite tool. We always recommend saving regular external backups of large pieces of work before you make any software changes.
 

How to change from using Mendeley Desktop to Reference Manager
1. Sync your existing library in Mendeley Desktop


2. Download and install Mendeley Reference Manager.

3. Open the new reference manager, and sign in using your existing Mendeley credentials

All of your references/data/collections etc should automatically show up in Reference Manager when it syncs with the cloud.

If you choose to uninstall Mendeley Desktop completely, first go to the Tools menu to uninstall the Word tool, Mendeley Cite-O-Matic.
Note that you don't have to uninstall Desktop/Cite-O-Matic before you install and begin using Mendeley Reference Manager and Cite.

• A reference list is a list of everything that you have cited in your work
• A bibliography is a list of everything that you have cited in your work and any other sources that you might have consulted during your research but have not cited.

These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, so make sure you are clear what is required from your subject.

Mendeley Reference Manager

Mendeley Reference Manager automatically creates a reference list when you click Insert Bibliography. i.e. It only includes items that you have cited or referred to in the document.

If you want to include items that are not cited in the document, you can add the citation in text as normal (e.g. at the bottom of the page), then it will automatically add the item to the reference list. When you are finished, you can remove the Mendeley content control from your Word document and then delete the in-text citation.

Mendeley Desktop

Mendeley Desktop does allow you to create a bibliography from a folder, but please remember that this software is due to be discontinued.

Consider other reference management software?

If you know that you will be starting a large piece of work which will require a bibliography rather than a reference list, you may wish to consider using the reference management software Endnote instead. See Endnote Creating Stand-Alone Bibliographies.

Each School at Edinburgh Napier University has its own Referencing Guidelines.

See Referencing Guidelines on myNapier.

Change citation style

Mendeley will allow you to change citation style at any stage, which can be particularly useful if you write a paper for submission to different journals. 

In Mendeley Cite, select Citation Style > Select another style.

Go to the Duplicates folder on the left hand side.

You will see duplicated references grouped into sets. You can delete any unwanted references to resolve a duplicate set.

Mendeley Reference Manager will also detect duplicates when importing new references - and will prompt you to go to the Duplicates collection, where you can review and resolve any extra copies of items as necessary.