Mendeley is trying to be for academics what last.fm is for music fans. When I graduated in 2008 it still wasn’t that stable, but since then I have used it exclusively as citation management software. Today, I’ll write a bit how I incorporate it into my literature review process and how it fits in with writing.

What does it do?
It recognizes academic papers or other literature pieces. To me, this is the killer function. Simply copy a paper into your Mendeley folder and it will try and recognize what it is. This saves you a lot of typing time. Once you have your source in the library, it also syncs the actual file to the Mendeley servers, if you want this. Online you can see what others are reading or publishing, as well as search for papers. This give it that added social component, which is cool. What is great is that you can import a document into your library with a single click from the online library. The web importer is also great: simply click the bookmarklet and Mendely will add the currently viewed tab in your browser to your library, often recognizing the content (e.g.: authors, date, title, etc). As easy as that. You can also create folders or groups of papers. More on this later.

Bookmarklet importing a web source

Citations
Next, and probably most interesting if you using Word for writing, is that you can download and install a plugin that allows Mendeley to grab citation details from your library and put these in Word, Neo and Open Office. If you are using a citation style such as Harvard (Author, Date) this might not be a big deal, but for IEEE or ACM papers that use numerical citation styles (e.g.: [2,4,5]), this will save you a lot of work. Even with Harvard-like styles, you might end up combing through your text, trying to find sources that are missing in the bibliography. This process is automatic in Mendeley and all the used sources will appear in the bibliography automatically, in the stipulated format, from which there are quite few to choose from.

Citing is easy. Once the plugin is installed you get a menu option in your word processor of choice. When clicked, this takes you to Mendeley and allows you to select one or more sources. Once you selected, you are taken back to Word where your citations have appeared (in the text and bibliography).

Less than 100 citations seem to work fine in a document but I find that it starts getting worse from there. As for the library size it works fine with medium sized sets of sources, but I have noticed that once you get to 1k of sources in your library, startup can be sluggish. I have also given up on trying to make sure I don’t have duplicates and wrong meta data.

Groups

Mendeley Groups
I’d recommend groups for every new project, but try and not be too enthusiastic with adding sources if you are not actually using them in your text. Your groups get messy and you lose all oversight. In order to keep things accurate, I make sure that all the documents in a particular active folder is in a pristine state. Doing so for your entire library feels little futile. Just make sure that what you cite is correct.

You can grab Mendeley here.

TLDR: Mendeley is great for managing and organizing your sources. It saves you a lot of time in formatting citations for your text. Works well with Word.

In general, LaTex is much more popular in the hard sciences since it allows you to create nicely rendered equations. However, it has also been somewhat popular amongst humanities students who do not need to have equations in their text.

I found it remarkably easy to switch: I had about 10k words written for my thesis, in a document containing about 100 citations generated by Mendeley. The hardest part was switching my Harvard-style citations over to BibTex, but even this wasn’t as bad because I could search for “(Gefen 2000)” and replace all occurrences with its BibTex equivalent (\cite{Gefen2000}). In total, the whole procedure took me less than a day. This includes figuring out how LaTex and BibTex works. Below I will highlight some of the pro’s and con’s that influenced my decision to try it out. I’d like to state that I am a novice, so if anyone with a lot more LaTex experience wants to correct anything, let me know.

PROS
Citations
LaTex + BibTex + Mendeley makes citation easy. This is probably the main reason you could consider switching. Mendeley does a pretty decent job of recognizing papers. It is also capable of generating .bib files, with citation keys pre-made (AuthorDate). This makes it very versatile since if you are managing your library with Mendeley, you can always still use Word to write shorter pieces of text, whilst still benefiting from your citations. Citing in LaTex is dead easy: once you know the citation key, the only thing to do is write \cite{CitationKey}. Writing software such as TexMaker makes this process even easier by offering a drop down of existing citations, sourced from your .bib file (think of it as a linked .css file). The benefits of BibTex are even clearer when you are dealing with 100+ citations. Word + Mendeley just isn’t that good (yet) when handling larger bibliographies. The benefits are even greater when you using number based citations like ACM or IEEE: LaTex generates these automatically.

Another major plus it the ability to insert page numbers into your citations: \cite[p. 192]{Putnam 2000}. The sky is the limit when it comes to library size.

Flexibility
When writing in Word, you are stuck with using MS Word on your PC or Mac. Alternatives like Open Office don’t always play nice with your .doc(x) files, so you really have no alternative. With LaTex, you can choose any text editor. This also means that you are platform independent. For some people this might not be a important, but since I routinely use Mac, Windows and Linux (Mint), it is a plus. You could even opt to write it in your browser. Additionally you can use fullscreen editors that allow for distraction free writing, ultimately saving you a lot of time. You also have direct control of the text: there is no second guessing what your word processor is doing: you can see the inner workings.

Stable
LaTex is stable. If your Word document has ever become corrupted, or all your citations lost, I think you can really appreciate the stability of LaTex.

Formatting, Numbering
One of the biggest headaches in Word is getting a nice table of contents and consistent numbering. Sure, it is possible to do so, but the process is not as intuitive as it could be. LaTex is super easy. It has a hierarchy, depending on the document class, and merely typing \chapter{Introduction} tells it that there is a new chapter. The code \section{Method}, denotes a section in that chapter, etc. Putting in a table of contents is as easy as typing \tableofcontents. Images and captions are also significantly easier to deal with. I remember spending a day on my bachelors thesis, just to get the images where I want them. Additionally, pdf’s generated can have hyperlinks to text, figures, citation, etc., plus bookmarks to your chapters.

CONS
Coding
If you haven’t coded before, LaTex might be daunting. Most of us grew up using Word or some other alternative where we are not confronted with the inner workings of the text. With LaTex you are exposed to the syntax. This, once again, sounds more daunting than it is: it is actually simpler than HTML and many people are are quite familiar with this (thanks MySpace!).

Compatibility
Outside of the technical sciences, LaTex is not a very widely used. This can be problematic if you are required to send drafts of your work to colleagues. However, there are some LaTex -> Word -> converters, which makes collaborating easier. I can’t vouch for these though, I haven’t used one.

Design
The default design of a LaTex document looks quite good if you are writing a thesis in Humanities or Technical Sciences. For Design students, this might not suffice. Changing fonts and layout is possible, but there is a slight learning curve. However, you can opt to write entirely in LaTex and then produce a text file (.rtf or .doc) that you can then place into InDesign, so you can design your final document the way you want it. However, there are loads of LaTex packages available that will allow you to create documents that look just the way you want.

To conclude: if you are used to writing rudimentary code and don’t mind working in a text editor, then you might want to give LaTex a try. Setup is not that hard and there are lots of example and source files available. I would generally recommend it for longer writing projects with lots of citations. If you are not using a lot of sources in your writing, then it might not be worth the effort to switch. Simple documents such as short essays might not be easier to write in LaTex.

A few resources:
Citations in LaTeX
Great General Tutorial by Andy Roberts
Default LaTex Layout (pdf)

Some software:
TexMaker, a good cross platform editor.
MikTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in Windows)
MacTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in OSX)

As for peterpixel.nl, I am not entirely sure how to proceed with the blog. My interests have sort of moved on from general usability into more design (research) methods. Perhaps I can find a place for the here. Either way, the coming 5 weeks will be spent preparing for my Masters Thesis, getting ready for my epic trip to Asia and moving to a new flat. Hopefully, I’ll get back to some more regular writing as the new semester starts.

The students at my former University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam, currently graduating at various companies in their 4th year, forms a perfect group of people to talk to, which is why I hope they are reading this.

Since I, like most of you, am currently working during the day, I would love if we can schedule a skype meeting one evening. I estimate that 30 minutes should be enough.

If you are reading this and am interested, please get in touch with me via email (communication@peterpixel.nl) or twitter (@peterpixel). Alternatively, simply leave a comment here.

Thanks in advance!