How to use Mendeley for social sharing of literature?
Mendeley enables social sharing of literature primarily through its "Groups" feature, allowing both private collaboration among defined members and public dissemination to the wider research community. It facilitates sharing references, documents, notes, and annotations within these controlled environments.
Creating or joining a relevant group is essential. Users typically share literature by adding references or uploading PDFs directly to the group library. Managing group settings carefully is crucial, particularly to control whether the group is private (invitation-only for collaboration) or public (open for discovery by others researching the topic). Attention must be paid to sharing permissions and copyright compliance when uploading full-text documents; sharing reference metadata is generally unrestricted.
To implement sharing, start by creating a new group via the Mendeley desktop or web application, setting its privacy level. Add members by email invitation for private groups. Then, within the group library section, utilize the "Add" button to include references manually, via identifiers like DOI, or by uploading PDFs (adhering to copyright). Members can subsequently view, discuss, and annotate shared documents within the group space. This streamlines team-based literature review and knowledge exchange on specific research topics.
