Barry Smyth

A wordle tag cloud generated from the post-match twitter conversations about Ireland’s tragic ‘defeat’ in the worl cup playoffs.

Mendeley, the-Last.fm-of-research, could be world’s largest online research paper database by early 2010.

Mendeley is a very interesting service that, as an academic, solves a real headache for me. Actually it helps with a number of headaches: maintaining my own publication database; maintaining my web academic  presence; building my collaboration network etc.

The service comes in the form of a client-side app which allows me to import and manage my publications (references and PDFs) as well as manage a library of research that I am interested in. The best thing here is that is compatible with lots of different citation formats and online publication databases so I was able to important all my research in a single-click.

Then there is the server-side service, basically a portal where I can control my online academic presence and, with a single click I can easily synch all of my details.

In only discovered this last weekend but so far I am very impressed and I would encourage other academics to give it a go. Our institutions might also learn a thing or two: compared to the research management systems that we have to deal with Mendeley is a dream.