Importing to Mendeley

Using Mendeley for the course can be a little tricky. The reason is because we want to share PDFs without forcing every single person in the class to purchase the software.

What we do, therefore, is to use Mendeley groups but to not put PDFs in the cloud via Mendeley. Instead, we store PDFs in a Dropbox that is shared among class members.

The Dropbox has all the papers using the Mendeley naming convention: [Author(s)] - [Year] - Title.pdf

Mendeley will rename files with this convenient naming format, but to minimize problems, use this procedure.

• Download Mendeley for your desktop computer.
• Join the AMB group.
• Add the Dropbox paper directory to your computer
• In Mendeley, go to Tools -> Options -> Watch Folders and select that directory (and probably only that directory)
• Also go to Tools -> Options -> File Organizer and check "Organize my files" and then select the path to your Dropbox folder (for me, it is C:\Users\Intille\Dropbox\AMB-PDFs). Do not check "Sort into subfolders". Do check "Rename document files" and make sure you have Author - Year - Title.pdf selected
• From the Mendeley website, install the Mendeley Web Importer for your browser. This will give you a "Save to Mendeley" button in your browser (it works in Explorer, I have not tried the others).

Now, when you want to add a paper, the best way is to find the paper on a site such as Pubmed or the ACM Digital Library. You can click on the "Import to Mendeley" button. Uncheck download PDF. Save the info to the AMB group. Be sure to tag it. If you can't find the paper reference info in a digital library, then enter the info manually.

Next, get the PDF from wherever you have found it. Temporarily save it to your computer's desktop without using the naming convention (e.g., use something like AddFileIntille ... anything except the naming convention, because you don't want Mendeley to try and use the name to grab the reference info). Then, after you have entered the citation info in Mendeley, drag the PDF file into the Dropbox directory. Mendeley should then immediately rename the file and it should be linked to your Mendeley list for the AMB library.

This procedure is not perfect. In particular, sometimes you can end up with duplicate entries in Mendeley. You can use Tools -> Check for duplicates to get rid of them, though.

Let Stephen know if you encounter problems.